I don't like no confusion.

Once you've started to dig a hole, you can't get out of it.

It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone. You don't feel that you're being tested, as it were.

The great joke is that a realist is an optimistic pessimist. That's very witty. Whether it's truthful or not, that I don't know.

I think you can fan the flames, but I think in the same way that a mathematician is a mathematician - He's not taught to be a mathematician. He either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well.

If I hadn't been a part of [Harry Potter] I would have been deeply upset.

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought. It encourages our business to be competitive in absolutely the wrong way. We're not sportsmen; we're not trying to come in first.