I think classical music tuition is, well, was when I was a child, was an abomination. I think in some ways it is one of life’s great tragedies for everybody who gives up an instrument.
I travel to work on my motorcycle, so it’s jeans, boots and a brown Aero leather jacket that weighs as much as I do. If it were black, it would seem like I’ve got a Brando idea going on, which I don’t.
It gets on top of me and I get frustrated.
I rowed for Cambridge. I was pretty good at that.
Believe it or not, perhaps I don’t show it much, or well, but I think I like people.
Perseverance does not equal worthiness. Next time you want to get my attention, wear something fun. Low-riding jeans are hot.
Piano was – well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.
I don’t like the act of talking; it makes me slightly light-headed.
I do actually like Los Angeles. Partly because I was told I wouldn’t.
I just read an 800-page history of the Scottish Enlightenment and, honestly, I may as well just start it again now, because I cannot remember a single thing. I can barely remember where Scotland is.
I don’t talk like House, or walk like him. I certainly don’t think like him. I don’t like to think for more than 15 minutes at a stretch actually; I am a fragile flower.
I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.
It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement.
Just because it’s a bad job doesn’t mean I need to do it badly.
I don’t believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he’d take it away.
Humility was considered a great virtue in my family household. No show of complacency or self-satisfaction was ever tolerated. Patting yourself on the back was definitely not encouraged, and pleasure or pride would be punishable by death.
We put this 15-year old girl on the cover of a fashion magazine, and tell everyone she is the epitome of sexual perfection, but we jail anyone who touches her for another three years.
I feel like I’m working on an oil rig right now. I’m away from home a lot.
It’s a holy city for music.
When school friends would think about appearing on stage as the most frightening, the most awful, intimidating experience ever, I knew that it was something I could do.
I suppose actors crave attention of some kind or they have suffered some form of arrested development and are still living in a sort of child’s fantasy existence at some level in their psyche.