It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.

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.

Then you are a poet?' she asked, fingering the flyer in her pocket.'No not at all, ' he waved his hand. 'I am merely a character in a poem.

Thought involves a little charlatanism.

Every Autumn now my thoughts return to snow. Snow is something I identify myself with. Like my father, I am a snow person.

I like that best as I am so hairy.

The more original a short-story writer, the odder looking the assortment of things he or she puts together for a story.

Whatever you say, say it with conviction

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

Physical elegance comes from the body. This is no superficial matter but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground.

People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They're no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail.

I got a standard box. I don't never want nothing special. Then if I drop my box, I can borrow somebody else's.