“The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve been told and not told. You’ve been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Love isn’t about when you first meet. It’s about the many, many years you spend together, when you’re trying to keep that flame burning.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I’ve always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I try to always go for something very interior, following thoughts and memories, something that I think is difficult to do on the screen, which is essentially a third-person medium.

And if these incidents now seem full of significance and all of a piece, it’s probably because I’m looking at them in the light of what came later.

I have the feeling of this completely alternative person I should have become. There was another life that I might have had, but I’m having this one.

We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they’re capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don’t care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they’ve done wrong.

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.

I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.

The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that’s been given to them, and find some dignity.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?

Anytime I can sneak in a moment to fish and ride horses, I’m a happy camper!

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

When you have something in life that you want to accomplish greatly, you have to be willing to give up your happiness I’ve lost all my sensitivity as far as being embarrassed, being shy, you just have to lose that.

Basically, people are never happy enough because they want more money.

Maybe the key to happiness is learning to appreciate life for what it is rather than what it could be.

The freedom that money gives you makes you… well, I wouldn’t say happy, but I’d say it gives you diversity.

Sugar does make people happy, but then you fall off the edge after a few minutes, so I’ve really pretty much cut it out of my diet. Except for cupcakes. I like those.

I take for granted how much I love sad songs when I’m happy I forget how much they hurt when I’m broken.