I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did.

I have mad luck. I'm super-good at games like backgammon or anything that requires rolling dice.

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.

I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.

Nothing's going to come to you by sitting around and waiting for it.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it's probably a character problem.

What I did have was an incredible amount of belief in myself.

I was really surprised when I started working and realized that you're actually on your own, a lot of the time. It makes you really responsible, as an actor.

I think movies have much more magic than the theater. Theater can be a magical experience, but movies thrust their subjectivity on you in a more profound way.

And when I get bored, it's like the worst parts of me come out. I really veer to self-destructive tendencies quickly.

When it comes to love we are primates breaking stickswhile pointing to our hearts.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

People tend to keep their distance.

The great part about tennis is you can't run out the clock.... As long as we were still playing, I had a chance.

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

If there's anyone still present whom I've failed to insult . . . I apologize.

It was not cool to be that fun, bubbly kid, so I would just go off on my own and sing and make up songs, and that's how I think I developed into the kind of artist and writer that I am.

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.

I think there are people watching me, and if ever I manage to save £1,000 there's someone saying, 'Oh, we'll invent a tax to take that off him'.

Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.