Missing someone is like hearing a name sung quietly from somewhere behind you. Even after you know no one is there, you keep looking back.

Words slip into a language the way white-green vines slide between slats in a fence.

Some things take root in the brain and just don’t let go.

The Soul is a house...Let it burn!

I think of myself as an ambassador of the arts. In my heart of hearts, I know the world would be a more peaceful, tender place if we were more moved by the poetry around us.

How you do money is how you do life.

My comedy is for adults, but you can have your kids listen to it. They won't get all the jokes because hopefully I'm more cerebral than a 10-year-old... but if you ask my wife, I'm not!

Years, following years, steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

The layout of textbooks, I think, has been done with an assumption that students don't read.

While some rules are necessary and good for us, living a life based on others' rules, needs, and expectations can stifle your self-expression and creativity, and keep a lid on your potential.

I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

Much testing, much reflecting, much living must intervene before we can say, 'My soul is my own.

Some of the most patriarchal thinkers I know are women. Some of the most feminist thinkers are men.

There's something perverse isn't there, if you're playing in front of 100,000 people and there's 2000 people down the front who don't like, you think: what is it that they don't like?

When I first did theatre, I was always doing comedies; it was always my first love. But it wasn't what I was picked for at first, for films and TV.