I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

You don't have to be brought up in a grand house to have a sense of the past, and I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory - the place, the past - speaks.

I don't believe necessarily the past is in the past. It's eternal, it's all around us.

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.

Yes, I have inherited the past because I have acknowledged it at last? And, now that I have come to understand it, I no longer need to look back.

I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern.

Men are fickle creatures, capable of kindness and compassion yet fascinated by the basest atrocities.

My mother taught me that we all have the power to achieve our dreams. What I lacked was the courage.

The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.

I am content that the work that I've done is wonderful.

The trouble with New Age music is that there's no evil in it.

You must never sacrifice your relationship with God for the sake of a relationship with another person.

If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest

I want someone who is open-minded, dedicated to whatever she is doing and isn't afraid to say I love you. As for looks, she shouldn't have three heads. I want a regular human being.

I think TV is much more the writer's medium and film is about the director and their vision and how you can collaborate with them and see that through to the end. They are so different

Cut your excuses in half and double your actions around your goals.