Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos.

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record.

I think we should all call ourselves feminists.

All actors are looking for that role that's going to define who they are. When it happens, it's a good thing.

That's true, because I'm a photographer now.

I think people respond to truthful, simple narrative, and the more you try to dress it up to try and do something else, the harder it is for people to relate to.

People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.

Thank you to my wonderful actors, the triangle of man-love which is Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and me.