I'll be your friend so long as you're not crap

Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.

I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.

My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.

My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.

My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.

I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.

I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

Whenever you take on playing a villain, he has to cease to be a villain to you. If you judge this man by his time, he's doing very little wrong.

I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.

Real life is sometimes boring, rarely conclusive and boy, does the dialogue need work.

there is some achingthat will only heal...in the mosque of sleep.

What is knowledge but a lucid enunciation of ignorance of yesterday. If there is no darkness to dispel, there can be no light.

His lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine. He repeats my name like the word amuses him. Entertains him. Delights him.

All Criticism is Good Criticism. Learn from it.

I'd really like to write a book about Timothy McVeigh, but it would only work if he cooperated.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Perfection is impossibility but striving for perfection is not. Do the best you can. That is what counts.

Wanting to quit is a sign of success because it means you have something to quit; but don't quit.

No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty, the fulfillment of which brings true joy.