I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

My mother was right: When you've got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.

I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries.

There's no fun in a bag if it's not kicked around, so that it looks as if the cat's been sitting on it-and it usually has. The cat may even be in it! I always put on stickers and beads and worry beads. You can get them from Greece, Israel, Palestine-from anywhere in the world. I always hang things on my bags because I don't like them looking like everyone else's.

Robert Louis Stevenson... I'm focusing on the late short stories that I was ignorant of. I always thought he was a boys' author, but he's not at all.

One of the things I've discovered, thanks to the Japanese, is that you should enjoy yourself. In the old days, I used to think: 'Oh, never be satisfied, never admit to being happy.' But there's no curse in being happy.

I didn't really think of myself as being a muse.