I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

Crows don’t take from you, ” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.

Fine minds are seldom fine souls.

My life is nothing more than bad timing separated by unimaginable moments of tragedy. I'd reconciled my pain with the promise of revenge ... until her.

The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach

As long as gas is cheaper than bottled water, we can't be in a position of dictating to the consumer what to buy.

I would like to think that Ive left the world of cardiovascular surgery better than when I found it. That would be a suitable epitaph.

Then I reckon we got ourselves a good old-fashioned standoff." ... Nobody moved, or said anything, for the next few moments. "Old-fashioned standoffs are mighty borin

... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes.

If you really want something you just hang with it. We think our future's ahead and not behind.

Faith with proof is no faith at all.