I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.

Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.

And here is the lesson I learned in the army. If you want to do a thing badly, you have to work at it as though you want to do it well.

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.