“Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.”

Doctor Strange is selfish but he’s still saving lives.

An inflated sense of self-importance? Absolutely, but I think it comes from Doctor Strange need to control things and that’s what happens to all surgeons, I think. There’s a huge degree of uncertainty and bafflement.

I’m sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It’s an amazing discipline.

[Doctor Strange] is a really rich character. It’s an easy thing to have a good old meal every day. It’s great. Yeah, I’m excited.

The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It’s soul-destroying.

Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.

Lines are very difficult to learn.

I am shortsighted. I need glasses for watching movies or concerts. It’s not a hipster affectation; I do have poor eyesight. This is how ridiculous my life is: I’ve had the test for contact lenses, but I haven’t found a half-day where I can go to the optician.

I don’t wear a mask, I don’t have a suit. It’s not some CG double or a stunt double. The suffering the character [Doctor Strange ] goes through is immense!

I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.

I struggle to learn by rote. I’ve had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.

I’m always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That’s great fun, even though it’s as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.

I was very keen to work on the script with Scott Derrickson and [C. Robert] Cargill, and working out the important story beats, changing lines, upping the comedy, changing the pace, all of that was great fun.

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.

[Doctor Strange ] is slightly more specialised than Spider-Man or Superman or Batman, but he’s very loved by people who know him.

Laughing and crying are really similar – what happens to your body. It’s a very similar process in your diaphragm. Like a musician, you have to do your scales once in a while and warm up your voice.

There are days when the melancholy settles on you like a sudden change in weather. The kind of sadness that is intangible. Like the presence of an ache where you can’t pinpoint exactly where it hurts, you just know it does.

Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom.

I don’t think all writers are sad, she said. I think it’s the other way around- all sad people write.

A Betrayal I cannot undo what I have done; I can’t un-sing a song that’s sung. And the saddest thing about my regret- I can’t forgive me, and you can’t forget.

And I sighed and wept for what could not be–and for all that could have been.

What is she like? I was told – she is a melancholy soul.

In her eyes, the sadness sings-of one who was destined, for better things.

The sad thing is, she said, the moment you start to miss someone, it means they’re already gone.