“All you really have when you’re acting is the confidence and your ability to manage and tell a story by creating a character.”

Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.

A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.

Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been burned as wizards

It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.

But hush! No telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. We must obey, and silence is a part of obedience, and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you.

We see radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear–and a voracious mouth to swallow.

Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on?

There is a reason why all things are as they are.

Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic when the fit of escaping is upon him!

But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.

This man belongs to me, I want him!

But this night our feet must tread in thorny paths, or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!

A brave man’s hand can speak for itself, it does not even need a woman’s love to hear its music.

She is one of God’s women fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth.

Nature in one of her beneficent moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don’t get it, I can’t do it.

Don’t think for a moment that I’m really like any of the characters I’ve played. I’m not. That’s why it’s called ‘acting’.

With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it’s just not acting. It’s lying.

Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting and, most importantly, a way of communicating.

Acting is the only time when I truly maintain the spontaneity that I want to be present at all times.

I never plan to stop acting, I take it very seriously.

Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.