I never did anything about my stardom, it never meant anything to me.

There just doesn't seem to be a market for something with aspiration anymore.

I don't want to peak too early. The worry is that you never know until it's all over whether you peaked at all - and then you're finished and it's too late.

The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming.

I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."

This is something particular to actors, especially in plays, and in films, too - but in plays, it's like, don't get involved with anyone in the play.

My now-wife - we got together in '81, we married a few years after - she's been very good in the past about going in the theater with me to see actresses I had known. But then, she's not an actress.

It was still quite late when I got married, 30s, I don't know.

The weak makes excuses, the strong makes changes.

If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.

When a man is truly a man, it makes a woman comfortable to truly be a woman.

Lord of the Rings, I think, is far and away the most brilliantly done stuff.

It is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos.

I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it. I think if you are determined enough and willing to pay the price, you can get it done.

Great players crave instruction on their weaknesses.

For all of us, self-briefing before going out or starting a project sharpens artistic wit.

NASA even sent Chuck Berry's music on a space probe searching for intelligent life in outer space. Well, now, if they're out there, they're duck walking