My father told me very early on that it was a sin to worry too much.

Scotland is a great nation, but its horses are very uncomfortable.

An acid is like a woman: a good one will eat through your pants.

Get power but don't admit to it. Do it by stealth. There's a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.

I walked away from acting for eight years and tried to make the choice that I should have made when I was 21. But, it doesn't make any difference. Nothing changed. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

There are messages about civilisations and we are trying to be true to history as much as possible. We wanted all this to gel with some good theory about why these civilisations went down, why they weakened and crumbled. Because they did, they vanished.

A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line.