“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.

What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

In the colorful reflection we have what is life.

Leap and the net will appear.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Everything transitory is but an image.

Remember to live.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

Some actors are brilliant character guys. They submerge.

Nothing comes easy when I’m in character, because everything I do in character, I take seriously.

I’ve always been intrigued by cutout silhouettes. They are so intriguing, so poetic-the shadow of a soul. They tell everything about a character and they are open to be filled with one’s own imagination.

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it’s Gary Oldman crying; it’s not the character crying.

I auditioned for the role of an angel in the Nativity play at school. I didn’t get it. I auditioned for Mary; didn’t get it. So I made up the character of the sheep who sat next to Baby Jesus.

Yeah, it is, because it’s a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That’s what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost.

Characters I’ve played, they used to impact my paintings, like 80 percent of the time, and especially when I was doing an action film.