The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.
I’ve always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden’s animations.
The email of the species is deadlier than the mail.
Like vichyssoise, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.
Nothing in this world is at it seems. Except, possibly, porridge.
Places of incredible glamour, possibility, power, excitement and pleasure. Love your libraries!
If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you’ll find it.
I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I’m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I’m just trying not to get into that sort of state again.
There can’t be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn’t room. There can’t be.
Somehow, as a writer, you tend to use words to paper over structural cracks.
Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.
They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we’re not 100 per cent human, that we’re always letting ourselves down. We’re constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.
Moving from chair to chair, from coffee machine to coffee machine is the limit of my action in most films. But I enjoy being cast in them because I love watching them.
It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you.
I want you to know that you are not alone in your being alone.
Talent is inborn, but technique is learned.
You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.
There’s nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.
But happiness is no respecter of persons.
Alternative medicine people call themselves “holistic” and say it’s the “whole” approach. Well, if it’s the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation.