When I realized that if I was an actor, I could be any character I wanted instead of just one particular, I was like, 'Wow, that's cool.'

I am a hopeless romantic and I love to spoil my girlfriends.

I missed my home - like the physicality of my home, I missed my friends and my family mostly and just hanging out and being in your home country - culturally it feels right and that is what I miss.

I'm amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I'm so lucky, though my mum always says, 'You make your own luck.'

Whatever happens in life is fine - just trust in that.

I had the training at drama school where I studied Shakespeare and Brecht and Chekov and all these period historical playwrights and I think that I responded to the material.

Although it is a fantasy film, it's as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth.

People come into your life and people leave it... you just have to trust that life has a road mapped out for you.

I got to dress up in funny clothes and run around New Zealand with a bow and arrow for 18 months, how bad could that be?

We have to make good use of the time we have. That simple. We have to wake up every day, knowing that it's not just an ordinary day. We have to take the moment, seize each day.

Dyslexia is not due to a lack of intelligence, it's a lack of access. It's like, if you're dyslexic, you have all the information you need, but find it harder to process.

When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?

Fairy tales are the skeletons of story, perhaps. Reading them often provides an uneasy sensation—a gnawing familiarity—that comforting yet supernatural awareness of living inside a story.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

She can tell you the height of the attacker from the trigonometry of the blood spatter, while I'm fuzzy on what trigonometry is.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention.

All mankind is us, whether we like it or not.

The second is that the role of China trade in Japanese economy, important as it is, has often been exaggerated, as proven by our experience of the past 6 years.

Pride is self contending with God for preeminence.

All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.

I originally wanted to be a singer, but I was average. I made 18 records, but none were that great. I was in a dance band at Bournemouth Pavilion for three years, and I played guitar too.