My advice about acting? Speak clearly don't bump into people and if you must have motivation think of your pay packet on Friday.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.

I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.

Work is much more fun than fun.

A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy.

For gin, in cruel sober truth, supplies the fuel for flaming youth.

Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.

You will know you're old when you cease to be amazed.

...if you give such a creature two blows with a whip, there are, indeed, two pains: but there is no co-ordinating self which can recognise that 'I have had two pains'.

When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.

My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

Leaders of men are later remembered less for the usefulness of what they have achieved than for the sweep of their endeavors.

When you start reading nonfiction books about piracy, you realize that it's actually just a history of desperate people.

One can only define the unknown by its supposed and supposable relations with the known.

Most of the supposed expressions of our feelings merely relieve us of them by drawing them out of us in an indistinct form that does not teach us to know them.

Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame.

Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.