There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

I am asked how to remain young, and I say 'Never, never work.' And that, of course, is the secret of it.

It is true that in America I've become a national hero, but really I was a hopeless case, that was all.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, "What did they teach you?" And she said, "They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room." I'm happy to say she was laughing while she said it, but she meant it. I've never learned to be a candle burning in an empty room. So I go on the screen, and I say whatever I'm told to say.

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who...have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.

God is so angry. All that power, and so mean with it.

In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.