I like working intensely, then going away and thinking about it, working out why it didn't work and then coming back to it. It makes the work richer, I think.

The guys on the stunt team are really fantastic. It's really funny, because for all the aggression they have to display on screen, they're actually really happy, good- natured people.

Every director is completely different.

Around the time of 'The Lord of the Rings,' it was a shock to me just how big it is to be on that kind of media juggernaut. It was a big thing and the scrutiny was shocking.

I hate being pigeon-holed into anything. To me, the best thing is when the next job comes and is completely different to the one that I just had.

I'd always had a big thing for the '60s.

Writers would hate me saying this, and I love words, but I have to say that cinema exists, on one level, for the power of the big image and what that image does.

I'm so fair that I didn't go in the sun as a child. When all my friends were on the beach, I was going to ballet. The teachers there didn't like you going in the sun, so I never did.

Acting is a freelance career... you never stop having to prove yourself and fight for work.

Some scripts you read and say, 'I've just got to do this' and you find a way of making it work. Some things you turn down because of the impact on family.

I think you go through a period as a teenager of being quite cool and unaffected by things.

I wish I had never been born, " she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness, " said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment...

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

O miracle—thus to be able to give [peace] we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands!

Maybe if we just lay beneath the stars long enough, all our worries will dissipate into the cosmos. And we can lay there motionless, yet sailing across the stars.

I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave

I don't stand for the black man's side, I don' t stand for the white man's side. I stand for God's side.

Just as with the man in the fairy tale who turned whatever he touched into gold, with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

President Obama told a group of school children that broccoli was his favorite food, and they believed him. Then he told them Obamacare would reduce the deficit and the kids all busted out laughing.

Natural gas is not a bridge - it's a gangplank.

A good funeral gets the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be.