“I don’t watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.”

There is so much we can learn from TV. It’s a window on the world.

It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.

I went to Cambridge and thought I would stay there. I thought I would quietly grow tweed in a corner somewhere and become a Don or something.

An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.

I’ve never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there’s just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There’s very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I’m lucky enough that it’s reasonably mild in my case.

You don’t sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn’t work like that.

Oh, it takes a lot for me to walk out of a film.

I don’t watch TV. I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business – which at least does us all some good.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

I’m a bit of a coward, and lazy, oddly enough.

My father was all brain and little heart.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Personally, I’d never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.