You don't expect to get the letter saying, Her Majesty would like to appoint you Knight Commander of the British Empire! It was just a completely overwhelming and exciting day.

I have no cynicism at all.

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.

You don't expect to get the letter saying, Her Majesty would like to appoint you Knight Commander of the British Empire! It was just a completely overwhelming and exciting day.

As a gay Jewish white South African, I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are, what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are.

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.

A lot of good actors tend to be quite introverted as people.

Every play I do, every book I write, every painting I paint, I will struggle with. I don't know what it's like for a project to come easy.

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.

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.

I love playing outsiders, I always do.

I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

I never regret things. It's a really dangerous thing to say, but for anyone involved in the arts, the bad things that happen make for good material. It's not a comfortable truth, but it is true.

I was a weak kid, not good at what all the boys at school were good at and I found that by acting, by being other people, I could liberate myself from those inadequacies.

I was never built to play the hero. Physically or emotionally... And they're not as rewarding to play. At least for me.

I'm a complete technophobe. I can't even email.

I'm a huge fan of David Hockney. I love the way he keeps reinventing himself.

I'm always very proud of belonging to three minorities: gay, Jewish, white South African.

If I could write a letter to my teenage self, I'd probably say something like: 'You ain't gonna believe what will become of you.'

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

My grandparents all came from Lithuania to South Africa.

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

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

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

When I am on a long run in a play, I'm not sure how I would fill the days if I did not paint or write. On a basic level, it just stops me going crazy.

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

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

I mean the only thing that is hopefully good about us is after the arguments we can actually still face each other the next day or the day after and talk about something else and sort of get over it.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

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

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

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.

George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I'm working harder than ever now, and I'm putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That's my philosophy.

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

The Pawnee chief had left the village the day after the doctor arrived, with 50 or 60 horses and many people, and had taken his course to the north of our route.