From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa.

Objects let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody. Texts don't.

For a million years the sound of making handaxes provided the percussion of everyday life. Anyone choosing a hundred objects to tell a history of the world would have to include a handaxe.

[The Persian Empire] left a dream of the Middle East as a unit, and a unit where people of different faiths could live together.

Objects are better than text at conveying narrative

In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.

In 1600, when Shakespeares audience at the Globe heard Hamlet for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant to be handed a cup of wine by a figure of authority and told to drink.

Believe that you can and you are halfway there

Abundance of life does not come from having a great job. Abundance comes from generosity.

Joy is the will which labors which overcomes obstacles which knows triumph.

I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.

At the end. First start off and do your youth thing In Hollywood and then go to New York later. But it wound up being later, later than I thought it was going to be.

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?

I do believe that ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.

I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints.

I usually play disenfranchised youth

Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion.