“There’s a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.”

My hair used to be real long, and my parents were encouraged when I cut it. They thought I was going ‘straight,’ but I was just getting weirder – at least in their eyes. I was getting into the punk thing.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq – a war more than a year away.

I’ll always do ‘Sherlock’ – it’s something I’m not going to give up on.

We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you’d rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you’ve got to have fun with it.

Sherlock being the most prevalent, and they’ve been really good fun.

I was never geeky about anything.

Sometimes being away, on location, I feel like I’m away for much of my own life. I want to be better at staying connected.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you’re Royalty.

This is an odd profession, and sometimes people get jealous, but I haven’t really experienced any of that. Everyone’s been really happy for me, which is really, really great.

Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They’re all “physically inhabited,” for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.

I like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.

I understand from those who adore him, he [Julian Assange] has a great sense of humor which rarely gets an airing because he’s dealing with such serious issues.

My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.

[on BBC’s Sherlock] It’s a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It’s a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer you must go to college. But if you want to be a musician or such, study your craft. Study music.

Doctor, you don’t know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don’t; you couldn’t with eyebrows like yours.

A few years ago he had a big heart transplant in Chicago, a five-hour operation. It took the doctors four hours to get him on the operating table.

In the next few years I’d love to play a female version of Doctor Who. I know exactly how I would play her – she would be crafty in a clever kind of way.

I truly feel the best doctors are ones who are criticized by nurses, patients and family. They do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes.

A doctor once told me that with crying you aren’t sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don’t cry: you scream, you try to run. When it’s over and you’re OK, that’s when you cry.

I actually wanted to be a doctor. But doing all those horrid rat dissections made me faint. I studied science till the 12th standard and later took up commerce. I was planning to do chartered accountancy, but fate had something else in store for me.

There’s huge satisfaction in that, but I’ve got to credit all the doctors and trainers in Cleveland.