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

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

But happiness is no respecter of persons.

Moving from chair to chair, from coffee machine to coffee machine is the limit of my action in most films. But I enjoy being cast in them because I love watching them.

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech, you know, you sometimes hear it hilariously.

I don’t believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god, l would believe in gods.

I think the fact that I’m so well known to be gay makes it very difficult to have a convincing relationship with a woman on screen. It wouldn’t be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman – I’ll kiss a frog if you like.

When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.

My parents were marvelously educated people.

I don’t need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.

If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you’ll find it.

Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.

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.

Happiness is no respecter of persons.

I’ve always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden’s animations.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind – with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.

As long as there is one heart on Earth where I still live, my memory will not die.

There is so many things wrong horribly wrong in this world but I know with certainty that you are not one of them.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.