Simon Callow Quotes

To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

I'd like to direct more operas.

I went to Queen's University Belfast and stayed nine months, then I ran away to be an actor.

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.

Very often my weekends are spent performing on Saturday, on stage in the afternoon and again in the evening.

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

Artists probably should have some impenetrable aspects of themselves.

I would say critically of myself that I am somebody without secrets. Sometimes acting depends on you having a secret. I don't think I've ever had that.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?

There is something essentially sanguine about me, which I am inclined to attribute to the fact that I was born by caesarean section. It must affect you.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.

Having caught a glimpse of what I might be able to do with my talent, I feel a tremendous obligation to try to fulfill it.

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.