People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

Be happy today, let the past bury and let the future fly.

Negative friends are almost as destructive to your life as your negative thoughts and beliefs.

The centre of me is always and eternally in terrible pain ... A searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfiguring and infinite.

I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it's very inexpensive to send mail.

Once we reach our goal, we immediately feel compelled to set a higher goal. We're left in a vacuum of unfulfillment.

The best part about getting knocked down is standing back up knowing what you didn't before.

Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Can that which has cost the artist days, weeks, months and even years of reflection be understood in a flash by a dilettante?

I am who I am, and I think I have a good nature, by and large. But if someone takes advantage of that good nature, well then, you know, I'm not that nice a guy.