As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

I write to make sense of my life."-John Cheever, quoted in _Cheever - A Life_ (2009) by Blake Bailey

I am always happy, because whenever I am sad I just know that somewhere, somehow, there is a person who is PUSHING a door that says PULL.

You will never be more than a common Christian until you give up your own interest and cease defending yourself.

Some people believe they are winners, others believe they are losers. And they are both right.

The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos.

Wait. You work for me?" "I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.

If I hear the word 'retire,' it makes me want to throw up. And then do what? Sit around all day watching television?

All of a sudden it didn't bother me not being modern.

Do not abandon trust when your ego thinks things should be different than they are.