“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.”

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.

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

To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

Because, let’s face it, I do not get offered the parts that Brad Pitt has just turned down.

I feel I would love to close down for a number of years in some way and just be in the country making pork pies and chutneys and never have to poke my head out of the parapet.

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word’s full octave.

No, I love the idea that someone changes. As an actor it’s always the thing that you look for. He is someone who starts off bright, cheerful and confident and then has everything taken away from him. It’s a wonderful journey to take.

You can’t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

This world that I live in is empty and cold/the loneliness cuts me and tortures my soul.

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.

Believe in the power of your voice! Be yourself. Everyone is unique.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

Mostly I try to be the best example of me that I can be.

I think I’ve had the longest career of strength, focus, and still being able to sell records.

Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.