Bridget Jones has a lot to answer for.

All Bridget Jones did was give us a word for it - singleton - which was the worst possible thing.

Bridget Jones has a lot to answer for.

Working together was a bit of a disaster. I'd tell him his ideas were cr*p and he'd say the same about mine.

I get really upset seeing my friends who are mums crying because they feel like they're not good enough. Clever, confident, kind young women all going, 'I'm ruining my child's life.'

It takes time and energy, and if I'm working, then I'd rather flop in front of the telly than put on a tiny dress and work out how to get myself to God knows where. I mean, lazy some would call it.

My dad always said, 'Don't worry what people think, because you can't change it.'

If I were to say you are crazy, what part of that would you find unacceptable?

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how I do these things. I can embarrass myself so badly that I literally get a hot prickle down the back of my neck.

Domestic goddesses have infiltrated everybody's lives and raised the bar way too high.

A lot of guys spend their lives saying no because it's an easier way to keep your job.

Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

I used to play hooky from school so I could watch cooking shows.

I was keenly aware when I was drafted, when I signed my first contract; immediately, I was thinking about the end.

Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to bump into one another on the journey from A to B and not even notice. People should take time to notice, enjoy and help each other.

I would hate to be 65 and think, 'What if I had tried to be an actor?'

The first 12-string guitar I bought was probably around 1957.

Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players. But others hire below their skills to make themselves look good. So B players hire C players. C players hire D players, etc.

In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state, and I know firsthand that horror.

I think there's a fundamental distinction between character-driven movies that are just really lovely slice-of-life movies and character-driven movies that you remember 20 or 30 years later; the common denominator with the ones you remember is that they all have some really complicated emotional problem at their core.

For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

I got sick of turning on the TV and seeing my face.

Bad design is smoke while good design is a mirror.

Sequoia seeds have flat wings, and glint and glance in their flight like a boy's kite.

It took 10 months for me to learn to tie a lace; I must have howled with rage and frustration. But one day I could tie my laces. That no one can take from you. I profoundly distrust the pedagogy of ease.

When I was 17, I had my first proper girlfriend, and on Valentine's Day, I painted a canvas of her, bought her a massage, put flowers on the stairs, and ran a bath.

Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed.

I'm very strange, I'm not going to lie.

Los Angeles is a one horse town. It's entirely driven by the entertainment business and that's what it is.

In an instant, we can make the choice to let our hearts stay broken or we can take a chance in living, and allow this beautiful adventure called life, set our hearts on fire.

My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn't cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.

In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.

Loyalty is a major force making for unity in any life even in the existence of a civilization.... It gives point and flavor most of all meaning to a life or a culture.