I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

Let's get one thing straight: there's no such thing as the Bristol sound.

I thought I had a clear picture of death, but now I know it's a mystery and it will always be a mystery, although it is something we all have in common: everybody knows that life ends with death.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually.

I am a very sensitive person, very impulsive and emotional.

I still don't like doing interviews. I hardly do any... I hope this will be the last one for a long while.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

I try to imagine how we would live if we didn't know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.

I've just put my heart and soul in a song and need at least a week to recover.

When you work on a Jerry Bruckheimer film, you can be sure of two things: no production value will be spared, and the catering will be as fine as any really really good restaurant. Jerry is an amazing producer, with a commitment to his films second to none.

The movie medium will eventually take its place as art because there is no other medium of interest to so many people.

I restore vintage Atari XY arcade video game machines.

Nobody is a real loser until they start blaming somebody else.

Cancer is not a death sentence but rather it is a life sentence it pushes one to live.

Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you're trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will.

There's no point daydreaming about what you want to play, because there might never be a script with that part in.

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

Whether you're on TV or on the stage, you have to work hard to stay fresh, real, and full of energy. You can't settle back. You always have to stay on your toes.

My father always said, 'If you love what you do, you won't mind slogging through it for several hours a day.'

She fell into the moody, miserable state of mind which often comes when strong wills have to yield to the inevitable.

Third-person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

I would be heartbroken if I ever thought that people in the Jewish community thought that Britain was no longer a safe place for them.

The thing that enchants me the most is the ability women have to feel other people's pain. The total empathy that women have is extraordinary.

Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them.

Follow love and it will flee, flee love and it will follow thee.

In truth wilderness is a state of mind and heart. Very little exists now in actuality.

You never want to rest on your laurels. You want to keep doing things that terrify you.

We are at last on the high lands of Mexico, the districts which at least three different races have chosen to settle in, neglecting the fertile country below.

I love the storm and fear the calm.

I would encourage you to set really high goals. Set goals that, when you set them, you think they're impossible. But then every day you can work towards them, and anything is possible, so keep working hard and follow your dreams.

I told my kids, 'It doesn't matter if this person or that person in the family isn't perfect; this is what you've got. We have to work with that, and if you can't work with that, then you're just jumping into someone else's family, and there's always going to be something missing if you don't work that out.'

Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality.