If I'd been four feet tall and fifteen stone, I would certainly not have followed the same career

I never get bored. There isn't enough time in the day for me.

When I write, it is always the melody that comes first, and it just happens to be the case that the most beautiful tunes are sad, and the lyrics follow the mood of the melody.

I feel happy and secure when I'm on my bed with a good book... I forget everything which is terrible in our world.

Unkind acts are like giving a piece of one’s self away for cheap.

You cannot step twice into the same river for other waters are continually flowing on.

I prefer the people who eat off the bare earth the delirium from which they were born.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

I regard remaking a film as creating something again.

Television is face acting, and film is eye acting.

The knowledge of sin is the beginning of salvation.

The government understands - every government, every administration, both parties, understands - that that power, they just don't have.

When we do the best we can, we never know what miracles await.

I have never pretended to be any kind of super-religious kind of man, but I feel very strongly that you can be funny without being dirty.