“There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word.”

I think that all of us either lose touch with the child inside us or try and hold onto it because it so precious to us and it’s such an extraordinary part of our lives.

Millions of children are disempowered and we need to empower them.

What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it’s a science. It’s neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

I’m very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.

I don’t honestly think people know what acting is.

I never read anything in print about me. It started with not reading reviews and with the greatest respect to my publicist here, I never read interviews. I was there when I gave them. I never read reviews. I was there when I did the jobs – so I’m totally immune. I live in a bubble.

That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere.

There have not been any troughs as regards my work. There’s never been a trough of my assurance.

If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.

John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London.

I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy… It’s a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.

Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic.

Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.

As a singer, I might have fallen among thieves. I wonder if I’d still be alive by now.

Hamlet is an astonishing intelligence.

I got involved with classical music when I was in high school and it’s followed me throughout my entire life and probably had a profound effect on my life.

Mustafa Kemal’s government was certainly authoritarian, but he had a saying which is profoundly true.

I like the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classy.

Whether I shall have the satisfaction of taking part in their exposition, or whether that will remain for some more profound expositor, will be seen in the future.

I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry.

You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.

The abstraction, ostensibly, is simply for me the penetration of something that is more profound in many ways than rigidity of a form.

In certain strains of Judaism, there’s a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can’t possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we’re off track.