Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare ... I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare ... but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude.

That's the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

My technique is the outcome of thinking for myself, of my own logic and approach; it is not borrowed from what others are doing.

If anybody else says it's like old times, I'll jump out the window.