If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic.

If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic.

Balance is the enemy of art.

A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.

All good actors are very bright. You can't be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them.

Art is about the 'I' in life not the 'we', about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn't acknowledge the private is a life not worth having.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

Don't ever be afraid to ask any question.

Every action has a consequence, so always try to be good.

Everything people say about grandparenthood is true - it is pleasure without responsibility. It is unquestioned love.

Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.

I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster.

I resent all organised religions.

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways.

I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.

I was a chronically shy child. That kernel of my younger self is still there, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with it.

I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion.

Naming a baby is an act of poetry, for many people the only creative moment of their lives.

The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work.

Theatre is castigated for wallowing in self-indulgence, but it's curiously unsentimental. You simply have to move on. Everything passes. Something in me likes that.

There are those who leave without our needing to detain them; we have said all there is to say.

There is in our society a gulf opening up, a kind of cultural apartheid, between those who are brought up to feel our national culture is theirs, to take ownership of it, and enjoy the privileges of that, and those who are completely disfranchised, those - for example - who will never be taken to the theatre to see Shakespeare.

Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.

We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our soul, if you like.

What we hold in our heads - our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history - is the sum of our humanity.

You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no.

We can alleviate physical pain but mental pain grief despair depression dementia is less accessible to treatment. Its connected to who we are our personality our character our soul if you like.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

There is a very good chance I could have been a screw-up for the rest of my life.

Anytime you have a difficult encounter with your child, there is a good chance that at least one of these factors is bringing out the worst in him or her: transitions, time pressure, competition for your attention, conflicting objectives.

All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

The Round-Up is a wonderful community celebration, and I greatly enjoy the chance to visit with residents and see so many families enjoying the festivities offered throughout the week.

But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

If I had had a chance to tour with Van Halen before the record, I think it would have been a different record.

And at the same time, you are of course a performer, but it's very important that you understand that your role as a performer is to get the best performance from those wonderful colleagues that you have the chance to work with.

All of us who are convinced that our military needs all the support the government and public will provide are pleased that he will have his chance to do just that.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Networks decide who will have a chance to do shows, but it is the viewers who make the final decision of who stays and who goes. I am very fortunate, in that the television viewers of our country have decided that Bob Barker can stay.

I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful.

Detroit was kind of a random thing where it was like a chance to be in a rock 'n' roll movie.

I haven't really had that many opportunities to play "lead" so I guess I jumped at the chance. I have also never done any "sci-fi" projects and thought it might be fun.

The records fell easily at first. Dozens of seconds peeled away with every running of a course, and I could hardly wait for the next chance to improve.

With two small children, I haven't had a wash since 2001 so the chance to go shopping is way down the list. It is something I do intend to get.

Also, when I started racing he knew a lot of people and it was more easy for me to find the first bike, so I have a good chance for sure.

Perhaps it's the people whose lives have taken sudden new twists - people who have learned to embrace the creative possibilities of change - who stand the best chance of penetrating life's mysteries.

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?

I know Mama Rose is a great role and I love having a chance to do it.