Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

My films are about embarrassment.

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development.

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.

I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.

I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.

I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't quite know what I've written. People don't read you too closely. Perhaps, after I've died, they'll look at my stuff, and read it through, and find there's more in it. That may be wrong, but that's what I comfort myself with.

I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.

I do not long for the world as it was when I was a child. I do not long for the person I was in that world. I do not want to be the person I am now in that world then. None of the forms nostalgia can take fits. I found childhood boring. I was glad it was over.

I don't believe in private education.

I'm less genial than people think, but I'm too timid to seem nasty.

I've been very lucky in everything, really - in my career and in finding someone to share my life with, and in not dying.

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest.

We were all miners in our family. My father was a miner. My mother is a miner. These are miner's hands, but we were all artists, I suppose, really. But I was the first one who had the urge to express myself on paper rather than at the coalface.

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

Im for the freedom of expression given that it will be under strict control.

Brought up in the provinces in the forties and fifties one learned early the valuable lesson that life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards.

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The people I want are very famous and very rich, and all I can offer them is a bit of exposure on TV and a bit of cash, so it's a miracle we get any guests at all. But we have been very lucky.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

I don't want to be famous famous. I'm happy on the second tier, where I have autonomy on a professional level but I can still go out to the movies without being recognized.

To be famous and broke is hard.

Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys writing comic books, I wrote Captain America, with guys like Stan Lee, who became famous later on with Marvel Comics.

I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher.

Well I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy.

People are much more inclined to believe and say bad things about you if you're famous.

I don't want to be famous as a movie star and have the whole world love me, I want to be a creative actress.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.