“As we all know from witnessing the consuming jealousy of husbands who are never faithful, people do not confine themselves to the emotions to which they are entitled.”

I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.

To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

I’ve never not been famous.

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?

In England, nobody’s your friend.

Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.

The happiest moments in any affair take place after the loved one has learned to accommodate the lover and before the maddening personality of either party has emerged like a jagged rock from the receding tides of lust and curiosity.

Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can’t help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don’t like that. That’s the famous joke:

You don’t have to deal with anyone in America. They accept you the way you are.

People are not heterosexual or homosexual, just sexual.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’

I recommend limiting one’s involvement in other people’s lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.

Anger is an all-consuming fire that will burn you and everyone else around you. Where is the justice in that?

I’ve played many characters that have consumed me and owned me.

I was a common man, and I will always remain a common man. No amount of stardom will ever consume my soul. Money comes, money goes. Fame comes, fame goes. I believe every human being is a celebrity in their own right.

Feel what you need to feel and then let it go. Do not let it consume you.

I seek calmness in between your words, amidst the chaos that consumes mine

Just like the moon. Keep glowing even when darkness is consuming you.

I’m a temporary being consumed by a lifetime of fantasies.

Sometimes sadness can consume us to a point where it feels like you’re in a spiraling black hole that is never ending.