If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

I'm a high-functioning sociopath, do your research.

Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

You come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It's made me want to live a life slightly less ordinary.

I keep myself amused and others confused

Cumberbatch - it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn't it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn't keen on me keeping it.

Rebuilding relationship requires a lifelong discipline and commitment.

There are few things better than losing yourself in a book. And if you're lucky enough to have that adventure continue in a series, it's like chocolate ganache on the icing on the cake.

Facts, and facts alone, are the foundation of science... When one devotes oneself to experimental research it is in order to augment the sum of known facts, or to discover their mutual relations.

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.

In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.

Our galaxy is 10 billion years old. The Earth is only 4.5 billion years old. We are a firefly flicker in the great astrobiology of the galaxy.

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself.

There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.

When you get to the rarefied air that people like Montana and Steve Young and other NFL quarterbacks are breathing, you can't believe the competitive, the cutthroat competitive nature of things.

As much as I remember, I just thought, I want to sing a song that starts normal and ends crazy.