It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

Nowadays people don't know how to handle it if all the ends aren't tied up and they're not told what to think in films. And if they're challenged, they think it's something wrong with the film.

I like working on things that are very different and that involve different disguises.

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

I don't feel I'm a compulsive person. I multitask. I'm really well-organised, and I have lots of people to help me.

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards.

I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they're so universal.

I think you can be as big as you like as long as you mean it. I really do.

I'm Scottish first, and it's odd to hear that I'm a Scottish-American.

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

Kids are more genuine. When they come up and want to talk to you, they don't have an agenda. It's more endearing and less piercing to your aura.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

My mum always told me I was precious, while my dad always told me I was worthless. I think that's a good grounding for a balanced life.

Once in a while it's good to challenge yourself in a way that's really daunting.

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte.

Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.

Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

Sometimes people get really sniffy about the films you choose if you've done more dramatic projects or you're classically trained.

Sometimes with people I know, they're playing the hunky action guy and there's resistance to them coming out because it's so connected to straight masculinity. There's a plastic kind of movie star who has a very short shelf with very small kind of ambition. I see that but I still don't agree with it.

With 'Urban Secrets,' I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.

You do get really exhausted doing films. You work such long hours, and after a while, things can get out of perspective, just like if anyone's tired, things get on top of them.

You'll see Dame Judi Dench in a Bond film, in Shakespeare and then starring in her own sitcom. You never see that here with Meryl Streep.

It's actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth,commitment, and openness and mostly you'll be okay.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

I hate wasting people's time.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

The work that we do during the winter is very important; we have a new bike and it's important to develop it during this time, and we start with this test.

Fortunately, I happened to go east at a time when live television was centered in New York.

I want to spend more time with those kids. I want to dedicate my time to train those kids and teach them what it takes, what they need to do to get to this level.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

Compared to today's salaries, our cut was minuscule but it was very good for the time.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

Hell, if I'd jumped on all the dames I'm supposed to have jumped on, I'd have had no time to go fishing.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

I had a wonderful time with the Stones but after 31 years, I thought it was time to move on.