Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?

Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.

The days of the digital watch are numbered.

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.

It is better to be quotable than to be honest.

It's better to be quotable than to be honest.

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

'Arcadia' is obviously a play that's got interesting things in it that are perhaps quite hard to grasp.

'Shakespeare in Love' was a particularly happy film.

'The Importance of Being Earnest' is important, but it says nothing about anything.

A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times.

A free press needs to be a respected press.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

A publisher many years ago asked if I'd like to write a novel for £50. And I said, 'Absolutely.'

A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.

All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.

All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Czechness more as I get older.

Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change.

As a child, I was airlifted out of the path of the Nazis. Unfortunately, I was parachuted into the path of the Japanese, but then I was airlifted again to India.

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.