I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.

One longs for a director with a sense of imagination.

Film has to be reflecting the world that we live in, and that's all you want to be a part of. Actors inhabit the same planet as everyone else. It's a weird thing that happens when you're an actor because people hold you up because you somehow embody in parts groups of people or people's hopes or something.

One of the most, in a weird way, encouraging things a director can say to an actor - I know this as an actor - is when you ask them a question, they say, I don't know - 'cause it means there's some space there for you to find out. And it means that there's going to be a process.

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

If only life could be a little more tender and art a little more robust.