Television has dried up for my generation, so its plays and films.

There are some actors who are rehearsal actors, and some who are not. I am not. Having said that, I don't know what I am talking about.

I'm an anorak. I've always been an obsessive collector of things. Richard Briers collects stamps. I collect cars and guns, which are much more expensive, and much more difficult to store.

There's no subtext in Harry Potter really; it's all magic, anything can happen. Why do I say this? Because it's a magic spell. It's quite nice in a way. There is a real freedom to it.

Like a heartbeat. Something inside me. Some dream. I think it's being a dreamer as a child. Dreamy kids become actors, don't they?

A child did approach me in a restaurant in Cornwall, but he thought I was Gandalf.

I'm very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There's nothing so beautiful.

There were no spells at my school, just a smack in the mouth.

I belong to quite a lot of learned societies. We collect firearms and discuss them at dinners and clubs and things.

I promise myself that I would go and do a play every year.

You get used to being lazy doing films, but classical theatre's going to finish me off.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

War settles nothing.

The highest priority you can have is education.

Man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of the greater.

I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.

Every show is your last show. That's my philosophy.

When you become a parent, you finally appreciate and understand what your mother did.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.

I am super-interested in fashion. I love being a person whose clothes get discussed. That makes it more interesting for me.