The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.

In my day, we didn't have the cocaine, so we went out and knocked somebody over the head and took the money. But today, all this cocaine and crack, it doesn't give kids a chance.

Plot and scene are still the hardest things for me, though I think they're the building blocks of what makes a story work.

There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform, and learn how to cope with injuries.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

As we grow old we slowly come to believe that everything will turn out badly for us, and that failure is in the nature of things; but then we do not much mind what happens to us one way or the other.

Making films is about having absolute and foolish confidence; the challenge for all of us is to have the heart of a poet and the skin of an elephant.

Elvis Presley was the sweetest, most humble and nicest man you'd want to know.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

Amalgamation is a good word that I like to use - musically and in every way.