I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.

My mother was very agnostic. She would never set foot in the synagogue, she couldn't be doing with it.

Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

And I think that that emphasis on keeping a family together, alike, I think it's important.

I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

Always you find that the more decisive event wins so my father's sort of annual decisiveness which came upon him on the Day of Atonement every year, he suddenly remembered that he was Jewish.

I find its attention to living this life rather than the next one exhilarating because I think even independently of Judaism that that's the right way to go about life.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

I suppose meeting people whether it's in real life and actually shaking their flesh and blood hand or shaking the mystical hand of the character all rub off on you in some way.

That's the thing about love, you have to get lost to find someone you can trust.

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

Successful people have always been the ones to learn from the mistakes of others as well as from their successes.

Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.

I felt sorry for myself since my wimpy dom can’t catch a snail crossing the sidewalk.

Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

The press is just not your friend when it comes to a marriage. That's why we didn't sell the pictures of our wedding, and we got offered millions of dollars for them, millions.

There was a time when I felt I should do everything that was offered to me, you know, ride the wave.

To me, the building [of Museum of Arts and Design]now looks like a lovely jewel box, and the tiled façade reminds me of a heat shield.

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.