I suppose meeting people whether it's in real life and actually shaking their flesh and blood hand or shaking the mystical hand of the character all rub off on you in some way.

My mother was very agnostic. She would never set foot in the synagogue, she couldn't be doing with it.

Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

And I think that that emphasis on keeping a family together, alike, I think it's important.

I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

Always you find that the more decisive event wins so my father's sort of annual decisiveness which came upon him on the Day of Atonement every year, he suddenly remembered that he was Jewish.

I find its attention to living this life rather than the next one exhilarating because I think even independently of Judaism that that's the right way to go about life.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured...Spend your free the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.

A man without fear, is a man I strive to be.

I know you [Donald Trump] live in your own reality, but that is not the facts.

I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth.

It is very difficult to be like the other guy, to be ordinary. Mediocrity takes a great deal of energy. But to be ourselves is very easy. You don't have to do a thing.

I think Banksy is a very cool artist, and I respect his social messages.

What's really fun is to write under different names.

I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

My parents are my inspiration. Believe it or not, they're my personal coaches. After every game I still call them and get their take on how I played.