I never act. I simply bring out the real animal that's in me.

I was born William. My father was William. I came from a big family, I hated being called Billy. Willem's a nickname; it's a Dutch name, very common in the Netherlands.

The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.

The English Patient' is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems.

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

The mask can be a limitation, but you just deal with it. You do get superhuman strength and pumpkin bombs and all this other stuff to express yourself with.'

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.

I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider.

You can be intuitive when you've got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opin

…in the library…surrounded by things far more dangerous than what roamed the school corridors. For here thoughts were housed.

Here have I come to die, ' he said, 'and where else could I ask to die but in your arms?

I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.

The difference between living and feeling alive, is using your fear as fuel to fly.

We're all polyester poets and pickers of a kind, with far too many questions for the answers in our minds.

If I even imagined someone talking to my husband too close, I would beat the crap out of them.

It is always the moralists who do the most harm. Abortion is the logical outcome of civilization, only the jungle gives birth and moulders away as nature decrees. Man plans.

There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it.