“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 felt a tremendous sadness for men who can’t deal with a woman of their own age.

It’s much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Use the difficulties – if you can’t avoid them

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

When you reach the top, that’s when the climb begins.

I don’t have any regrets because I’m very optimistic, and live each day as though it’s the last.

It’s vital to have your own space so you aren’t constantly in each other’s pockets.

I’m every bourgeois nightmare – a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I did everything. I ran my life exactly as I wanted to, all the time. I never listened to anybody. I’m pig-headed.

You start pretending to have fun, you might have a little by accident.

I don’t think human beings are bad. They’re weak. And that’s what makes ’em bad.

Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you’ve had a life like mine, you have to.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don’t have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it’s a nightmare. So, I like film – nice short takes.

My understanding of women goes only as far as the pleasures.

Don’t sit as if you have nothing to say. You should be bursting with things to say. You just choose at this particular place and time, not to say them.

The blood of the just will be demanded of London, burnt by fire in the year ’66. The ancient Lady will fall from her high place, and many of the same sect will be killed.

Five and forty steps the sky will burn. Fire approaching the large new city. Instantly a great thin flame will leap, when someone will want to test the Normans.

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would throw down roots with you if I ever had the chance. We’d grow strong in tender shoots, and bloom in burning hands.

In my dreams you conjure me like a spell in the night. Let us haunt one another with uneasy peace, and die burning alive.

Every now and then even the sweetest souls burn it to the ground, just to remind the rest of them who exactly they are fucking with.

You can fan the flames with hate or stroke the fire with love, either way, it’s going to burn.

What do you do when the passion burns out? Start another fire.