I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind.

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.

As children everyone thinks their family is weird and they're upset by the weirdness of their own family.

My secret is that I have never thought there is a secret to anything in life. Passion. Love. Drive. Work. Work. Work. Dull but true.

If you think you're going to have an eternity in which you can talk to Mozart and Chopin and Schopenhauer on a cloud and learn stuff and you know really get to grips with knowledge and understanding and so you won't bother now, I think it's a terrible, a terrible mistake.

There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.