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

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.

As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it’ll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.

My life, at least, is divided between writing and performing and mixtures of the two.

I shouldn’t be saying this – high treason, really – but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.

I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable.

It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you.

It was extremely important to show that Wilde’s sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you’re never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style. It’s in the spirit of it.

There is no particular Socratic or Dimechian or Kantian way to live your life. They don’t offer ethical codes and standards by which to live your life.

Generally, we admire the thing we are not.

I live a boring life, but it’s perfect for me.

These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.

God knows what’s best for us, though, so there’s no need to worry when things don’t go how we originally wanted them to go.

Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher – and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.

Health to the ocean means health for us.

Don’t depend on other people to be responsible for you. Don’t make yourself stressed out over nonsensical things like material things.

As for our majority… one is enough.

I’ve always said that I play for the fans.