“Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.”

An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.

I’ve never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there’s just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There’s very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I’m lucky enough that it’s reasonably mild in my case.

You don’t sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn’t work like that.

Oh, it takes a lot for me to walk out of a film.

I don’t watch TV. I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business – which at least does us all some good.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

I’m a bit of a coward, and lazy, oddly enough.

My father was all brain and little heart.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Personally, I’d never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand.

There’s no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.

Every living thing tends toward the good or we would have been gone a long time ago

Book dedication To myself, without whose inspired and tireless efforts this book would not have been possible.

Pakistan that we are appreciative for the help that’s been extended.

You had to see yourself poor and think of yourself as being poor, or you never would have been poor.

I don’t know how many of you have been to New York, but if a building is two blocks away from anything, you can’t see it.

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given.

Cinderella’s glass shoe was the perfect size…. so why did it slip off as she ran? It must have been to attract the attention of Prince Charming. I don’t see any other explanation.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people.