“Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else. I am disappointed but I am not discouraged.”

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.

I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice.

Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.

Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

Guessing isn’t knowing.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be.

Oh you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you

Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us.

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.

When someone is a musician – trying to make a living off being a public figure – it’s really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn’t have a personal life.

If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.

I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.

People won’t want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.

I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.