“In film, other actors’ performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn’t giving you what you want, act as though he were.”

I’ve had such a great time, I’d like to come back as me – and do it all over again.

I always exposed the weakness rather than the nastiness.

A man should dress in a way that you don’t notice. He looks good and you don’t know why. But it’s the tailoring, the materials, and the clothes.

I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.

Anyone can write. But comedy, you’ve got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.

Save your money. You’re going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

You’ve got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.

Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, ‘It’s a wrap,’ it’s gone completely. I’m a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.

I never regret anything. I always said that when I’m old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn’t do; and now I’m old, and I don’t regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I’m still having it.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It’s a company town, and I happen to like the company!

A lot of people said, Who do you think you are? I told them I know exactly who I am and I’ll tell you exactly where I’m going.

I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

Great acting is about listening to what they are saying not waiting to deliver your lines.

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.

A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of a sheep.

The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship; of these, the former is a mortal good, the latter and immortal one.

Young men’s minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks both before and after.

Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.

What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns!

Life is busy. There are daily concerns and obligations that have to be met, and to take time to think about how precious and special a human life is that you only get one, and that every wasted minute is lost. You can’t get it back.

We humans are more concerned with having than with being.