I've got wealth and fame but I haven't changed my roots.

I'm busy and that's the way I like it - when I have too much downtime I get into trouble.

We were the only black family in an estate with 1,000 white families. Liverpool being quite racist in the Sixties, it was a bit grim growing up.

Critics called me 'egregious' - I had to look that one up - and 'creepy', but now I don't read them, I weigh them.

My life has been, I suppose, the most incredible series of highs and lows.

Once journalists have been rifling through your dustbins, you do try and keep them at arms' length.

It's evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.

The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.

I have a stepladder. It's a very nice stepladder but it's sad that I never knew my real ladder.

I was thinking - if we get a cell with a trouser press, we can make cheese toasties.

Who needs drugs when you have Takeshi's Castle?

A man need is pain to be delivered from the pleasure of sin.

The real trouble with reality is that there is no background music.

In 1998, it was possible to make a big-screen romantic comedy about email. Yep, email - the same medium we often think of now as boring and even annoying.

When people see me struggling on paper, I think it invites an almost collaborative relationship with the outside world, and that includes readers and other artists.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

The guilt of newborns is immense.

Private confession was not ordered by Christ and was not used by the apostles.

Vision comes alive when everyone sees where his or her contribution makes a difference.

It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in The Practice than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.

I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches.