I don't have much time for real violence at all. I think there are infinitely better ways of changing the world than using violence. Sitting round a table talking is a pretty good start.

When you're dealing with killing people and things that are upsetting, that can be a delicate place to occupy yourself for a day.

We start off wearing frilly shirts and britches and being good guys and the heroes. And then as time goes on, every English actor ends up playing bad guys. That's what we do.

I think the James Bond thing has sailed. But of course I would want to be a Bond villain. They are great parts. I think it's highly unlikely, but one can always dream.

Somebody doing something effortlessly is a lovely thing to watch.

Im not a big fan of patterns. I like the unexpected.

One of the great things about being an actor is that you have a completely different challenge every few months.

Actors are their own worst enemies. They quite often will get in their own way, and I have to be encouraged, endlessly, not to get in my own way.

Ring tones are just irritating, aren't they?

I think the older I get, the less I should be doing.

Actors tend to get better with age. You start cutting away the useless stuff and achieving a point of effortlessness and simplicity, which is all you want to do, with any art at all.

I couldn't tell if I was perspicacious or paranoid.

My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.

Gotta bone ter pick with yeh. I've heard you've bin givin' out signed photos. How come I haven't got one?

There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

It's amazing how beauty can mask so many flaws

Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious, will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed.

All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it.

Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.

If literature survives at all, it is as retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.