The whole of my acting career is a bit of a mystery to me.

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

In the darkness, don't doubt, blame or cry. Be the light to enlighten the whole sky.

Have the courage to contribute imperfectly and authentically in a world that is quick to criticize.

Sometimes it is the methods of learning, more so, than what is learned, that is useful!

…every feeling is the perception of a truth...

I should not yield to it, he told himself once again as he walked along carrying the briefcase. Compulsion-obsession-phobia. But he could not free himself. It in my grip, I in its, he thought.

It's called 'falling in love' for a reason: it does not have to be forced and cannot be planned. It just happens naturally, and if you're lucky, it takes you by surprise.

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

Bullying isn't about size, it's about intimidation.

Fundamentalism is another problem. I mean, Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind.

And that's what everyone at Apple is focused on - pushing forward and creating the future.