It takes courage to stay young, to make your enthusiasms work for you. Don't let anyone drag you down.

The cinema is there to heighten the imagination; I have always tried to make sure it does so.

To be successful, you really have to put your ego in the background and try to be diplomatic to achieve what you want to achieve.

My house is not James Bondish at all. Sorry.

I always wanted to design for films.

Remember, the early '60s in London was something - which must have been like Berlin in the '30s when the arts flourished. You didn't have the differences in class, and so on.

One thing that I think works in 'Casablanca' and which I've lectured a lot about - in terms of what I've been trying to achieve as a designer - is the film's creation of its own form of reality.

I'm an incurable romantic, and 'Casablanca''s one of the most romantic pictures I've ever seen - the combination of Bogart and Bergman is just magical.

With Kubrick and most film directors, they are in complete control, but one can influence them.

What I felt at that time - we're talking about '61 - was that I couldn't remember seeing a film that reflected the age we were living in.

My mother and father were interested in the arts.

Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)

For all those who longed to find a best friend and found it in themselves

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

Why would I endorse the hibachi grill when I am the hibachi grill?

I used to run a full marathon in three hours and 25 or 26 minutes. Not any more.

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

I'm so thankful. I've been blessed. I never took it for granted.

I think when you're 16, if you have good parents, they generally just fade in the background. I had great parents, and because they were great, I thought very little about them in high school.

As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear.