“There’s no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.”

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.

Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand.

Anybody who loves country music loves gospel.

I’m the worst person to tell anybody how to date.

A kid who was on welfare, because he refused to steal anybody’s property or take anybody’s money. You found life a lot tougher.

It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else

Now, I don’t know how they judge all that, but if anybody in the world deserves to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Ritchie Valens does.

Don’t ever try and be like anybody else and don’t be afraid to take risks.

No-one wants to see anybody fail in life.

I really take my hat off to anybody that steps in the ring because it’s so hard – you’re competing against your friends, and you’re working in front of an audience who tells you exactly what they’re thinking.