A very, very impressive director, Tomas Alfredson. It's only his second film [ 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'], but he's a real find.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don't.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

Each day, as you get older, there is a new perspective on life. It's a progression of some sort.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

The only concession you can make is to what you believe is right.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

I must say I am not pleased to have to arrange the Senate schedule around the availability of Senators who are running for President.

Unknowing ignorance is preferable to informed stupidity.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought

A lot of superhero stuff now looks great but it's so difficult to read if you don't know how to read comics. I deliberately focus on the story.

Could a dream kill a man? Could it strangle him where he sat sleeping?

It is normal to enjoy praise and dislike criticism. True character is when you prevent either from affecting you in a negative matter.

I was born Mary Patterson, but then I married and naturally took my husband's name, so now I'm Neil Patterson.

We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

I've always had my ear pierced with a diamond stud. I did it myself when I was 16.