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

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 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.

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.

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

Was the sky always this shade of magenta?

They used to tell me if you’re depressed anyway, why not be depressed and take a walk instead of being depressed and staying in bed? If it makes no difference, why not get up and go out?

I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.

You don't have to be age 20 and size zero to be sexually viable or viable as a woman.

Even if someone thinks there's a mistake I've made on the piano, to me it's not a mistake; it's how it's meant to be.

When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

The humble man makes room for progress; the proud man believes he is already there.

It is easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse.

I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.

I said in my inaugural address that I am not the Council's secretary, nor am I the Parliament's lackey. That can sometimes lead to conflicts, which are defused through dialogue.