It's a great privilege just to be in a film not because you're some packaging that some agent has done with the studio exec: "We need a John Travolta film."

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather. Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.

Nowadays a lot of what was wrong with me would no doubt be ascribed to Attention Deficit Disorder, tartrazine food colouring, dairy produce and air pollution. A few hundred years earlier it would have been demons, still the best analogy I think, but not much help when it comes to a cure.

You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.