If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.

You got an all-out prize fight, you wait 'til the fight's over, one guy's left standing and that's how you know who's won.

No one enjoys being equal.

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.

Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'