Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

I've come to this conclusion: What makes a great actor is great need. A huge need of acting.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own.

Having caught a glimpse of what I might be able to do with my talent, I feel a tremendous obligation to try to fulfill it.

Everything that we have gone through, are going through, and will go through is there in Shakespeare. It is all of human life.

It's matter of choice and matter of thinking.

Poets aren't very useful because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.

Either I will find a way, or I will make one.

Kinsey himself collected absolutely everything.

If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!

All human beings hunger for appreciation.

People say be safe and I hate that, so I go to Skate Lab with no pads

If, as I suspect, the American consumer now enters a sustained slowdown, there will be unmistakable reverberations on U.S.-centric export flows in many major regions of the world.

The things that make me very angry are injustice and bullying. If I see someone bullying a woman or child in the street, or kicking a dog, I go completely mad.

These are the pieces of my youth, the small secrets and the not-so-great expectations that defined my coming of age.