“Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.”

“Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

“Every action has its pleasures and its price.”

“Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.”

“Be as you wish to seem.”

“Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.”

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

“Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”

“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

“Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?”

“Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.”

But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.

The interesting thing about a movie is the movie.

There have been many times when you spend a number of months and the finished product is not what you wanted to see. And 'Batman Begins' was what I wanted to see.

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous.

What the hell kind of man decides to dress up as a bat and run around the city? There's got to be something a little bit loose in there.

I never want to feel that I'm playing it safe.

In everyday life, my wife is the most wonderful. We're in love with each other beyond belief.

In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much. Maybe they'll come to interest me more as I get older. I doubt it, but maybe. Romantic comedies tend to be, for me, an oxymoron.

It's the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.

You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.

Directors go their whole career without being able to tell personal stories and to work with a cast as talented as they are.

My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message.

I won't kill you but I don't have to save you.

After the modest success of my first film, I found it very daunting to have to live with that kind of burden of expectations.

I've always felt that I would rather see an actor, writer, or musician's work, rather than actually know the person. If you know too much about an artist, it somehow lessens their ability to do their work as well.

I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played. They're all really far from who I am.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

I certainly liked performing [Patrick Bateman], but it was because he thinks he's so [bloody] cool and just the [stuff], but is really such a cheesy dork.

You get those occasional moments when you're absolutely calm, and you've just done something that would have scared you shitless earlier that day, and you've just done it like it was nothing. I find that very relaxing.

For me, I think the harder the shoot, the more I feel like I'm enjoying myself.

There's a level of confidence in the actor you're working with that really helps a lot. It makes all the difference.

I don't get it when you get so much openness about the way movies are made, and the special effects and the behind-the-scenes stuff and all of that. I can't help but feel like this reduces it a little bit.

I quite like it when you're working with people and you only get to know them through the scenes that you're doing together.

Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.

Any planning that I have in my career is totally accidental really.

I don't have acknowledged preferences of characters.

If you're smart you're just gonna be all about the work. But as a young person, you want to going out to clubs and doing all the stuff. I'm just glad I survived it.

It's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.

I become a bit of a blank page in public. And that's precisely why I like acting.

It's a wonderful thing when your trainer is actually the person you're playing.

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous. But I made sure I got moldings of my old teeth beforehand because I miss them.

I think the harder the shoot, the more I feel like I'm enjoying myself.

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

Planning a career, I always find a tricky thing, because I don't have much of a plan, really.

I would have been very happy just cruising around and enjoying the unexpected. I've never been ambitious.