“I’d like to win a Booker Prize for writing. A Nobel Peace Prize for my work in peace… and I think that’ll probably do.”

Acting, music, painting… it’s very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

I don’t think I’d have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I’d known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.

Rather than thinking, ‘If I do this, and in five years I’ll be where I want to be,’ you’re better just doing something that makes you happy now.

A lot of ideas took us to dead ends or we found the tone wasn’t just right. I think we discovered very quickly this wasn’t just a song to end The Battle of the Five Armies – it was a song to say goodbye to Middle-earth.

Sometimes the songs you think will be best don’t turn out to be best.

I really like acting but, just now, the more I read a script I find myself thinking I’d like to direct rather than act.

People are scared to make something that doesn’t look like another film that made a lot of money. It means we get ‘Four Weddings And A Funeral’ made again and again.

The innocent on a quest, the pretender, an inanimate object that holds evil – it’s really strange that these themes are there in so many different countries’ folklore.

I was probably about fourteen I think, and probably like every boy who’s fourteen that writes a song, it was about a girl. It was about a girl who I really liked, but she didn’t like me as much as I liked her. I think most guys go through that.

But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.

For me, what makes great actors, always is how truthful they are to the character and the story and the emotion that they’re trying to tell.

Hobbits are a lot like Scots. It’s all about nature and enjoying their land, which is a very Scottish thing.

Life in LA is not lying in the sun for months. It is having a 4pm meeting and leaving at noon to sit in traffic for four hours. Its not glam.

He [Viggo Mortensen] was standing behind the camera throwing the apples … And I’ve never seen him so happy.

I like people like Ani DiFranco, a band called Elbow, of course John Lennon, George Harrison, Barry White. I have a lot of different influences and hopefully they all come together and make some sense.

The same feeling you get from succeeding is the same feeling I get from failing, now imagine what happens when I win.

The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismist, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God.

Cultivate a sympathetic heart, humility in dealings, and selflessness in action. If these are practiced with earnestness and sincerity, then you will win the race of life.

Race, what is that? Race is a competition, somebody winning and somebody losing. Blood doesn’t run in races! Come on!

What is important for kids to learn is that no matter how much money they have, earn, win, or inherit, they need to know how to spend it, how to save it, and how to give it to others in need. This is what handling money is about, and this is why we give kids an allowance.

I’d love to win a Grammy! Not ambitious or anything. And just having a really lovely bunch of kids and a happy family life, would be good for me.

We can say, you can win the war only when you restore stability in Syria.

The central fire is desire, and all the powers of our being are given us to see, to fight for, and to win the object of our desire. Quench that fire and man turns to ashes.