“I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.”

Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and ’90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

It still makes me giggle that I’m paid to act.

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I’d like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I’d like to know.

The awful lesson of history is that we too often ignore people, just because they’re foreigners or different from us.

Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

You’d have to be pretty hard-nosed not to feel some sympathy for the guy [Doctor Strange].

Being someone who is of our sensual reality, Stephen Strange has a lifestyle, he has a sexuality, he’s materialistic.

I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.

It will be obvious to anyone who sees it that he [Doctor Strange] earns that cloak. You think he’s doing all right and then you realise that there’s one massive lesson to learn.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

[Scott Derrickson] is terrific, really sharp on the details, and he’s not afraid to go to dark places.

[Sherlock Holmes] has moved from being someone who was sociopathic, work-obsessed and slightly amoral, into being someone who has a certain degree of a private life, which is very, very private, with The Woman, or Irene Adler.

I’m sort of focused on my long-term goal of carving out a career that’s for life, rather than being a flash in the pan.

It’s great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I’m enjoying.

It’s not so much a case of having to pay attention to the news of the world as it is a case of knowing when to change our filters so that the important stuff comes in.

And there hasn’t been much progress in Darwinism since [the life of Darwin].

You’d look out and there’d be little babies watching the show, and boys and girls. They loved the cowboys, and they loved Annie. There were young people seeing the show for the first time. I stayed for two years because I enjoyed it so much.

There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert’s art.

I know death comes. I’ve seen too much death, young death.

My Jesus, fill my heart with so much love that one day it will break just to be with you. My Jesus, you know I have placed you as a seal on my heart. Remain there always.

I don’t smoke, I don’t drink much, I don’t eat red meat. I stay out of the sun.

A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement.