Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.

If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.

Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.

My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.

The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.

I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

I take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.

I often think that could we creep behind the actor's eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book.

I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.

We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are - politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.

The actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

'Richard III' is a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before.

A man's prime interest in life must be his work.

I can't think I've ever loved anybody quite as much... My mother was my life, really; she was my entire world.

I suppose, unconsciously, I used all my wives to further my journey up the ladder.

It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.

Nine books have been written about me, and there's not a word of truth in any of them.

Nobody is going to pretend that I am younger than I am. Apart from anything else, it is in the papers all the damn time - every time I have a birthday.

Take a simple view of life: keep your eyes open and get on with it.

We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.

If he was lost for a moment he would dive straight back into its honey.

Dont waste your time striving for perfection instead strive for excellence doing your best.

Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence - doing your best.

I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

My mum says, 'Go with your first instinct,' but this can lead to impulse buying!

To be womanly is one thing, and one only; it is to be sensitive to man, to be highly endowed with the sex instinct; to be manly is to be sensitive to woman.

I generally wade in blind and trust to fate and instinct to see me through.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

The instinct to worship is hardly less strong than the instinct to eat.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

Your instinct, rather than precision stabbing, is more about just random bludgeoning.

The instinct to impersonate produces the actor; the desire to provide pleasure by impersonations produces the playwright; the desire to provide this pleasure with adequate characterization and dialogue memorable in itself produces dramatic literature.

Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend and to be true under any and all trials is the mark of a man!

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Bullies are always cowards at heart and may be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey.