People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol.

I believe in divine inspiration and things like that and I really relish a good, attentive, participating audience.

My first acting class was taught by a little known playwright, David Mamet, who then cast me in my first play, opposite John Malkovich.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

It was post war. It was very gray, very dreary. Everything was still rationed when I first saw the United States in 1951. I went over to visit my sister who was a war bride.

I'm not intimidated by other actors at all - or directors. I don't care who they are. But I am intimidated by writers. I hold them in the highest esteem.

I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano.

I think the Democratic Party realizes, having lost two presidential elections, we need to do a better job of creating a farm team.

I belonged to Stratford Children's Theater when I was a boy growing up in Manchester. Even then, I was always doing character parts.

I'm a dog person; I've had dogs all my life.

You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy. And ummm, yes, I feel a huge emotional attachment to England.

None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.

It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect.

There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

Smart work pays best. Trust it.

I asked the Mesquite coach who he thought the best team in Mesquite is. He said they were about even.

I grew up in the Deep South, where sexism, racism, and homophobia were and still are alive and well. I have early, early memories of words and actions of this type being very painful.

Flowers are words even a baby can understand.

I was always trying to be leaner and thinner to fit the standard and the mold.

Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack.

This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!