An actor remembers his first piece of published praise. It is written on his heart.

For me, half the joy of achieving has been the struggle and the fight, the pitting myself against the world and all its competition - and winning.

After my mother died, I found, a little book of hers which recorded everything I had ever done, how I had done it, and how proud she was of her son Conrad.

Looking back across the years, so many pictures flash on the screen of my memory that just as I begin to see one clearly, another slides in, blotting out the first, itself to be pushed aside by the next and the next and the next.

My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home. It pleased mother, caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.

I used to think then that I was Bohemian, but I know now that I am not. I prefer order and precision to untidiness and looseness.

I can see now that I should have been strong enough to conquer myself.