Something about teaching is curiously attractive, actually. I don't know what it is.

I'm a laugh tart. I make no secret of that fact.

I'm quite jealous of my Scottish relations, in whose culture everyone, in a Jane Austen kind of way, got married very young, when you're too young to be cynical or jaded and just started having children.

There were various turning points, but the main one at the beginning was that I was going off to do another degree in the history of art. I would have ended up as some art historian at Sotheby's or something.

Some newspapers in Britain have become closer to these kind of mafia families. They wield an incredible power. They choose our governments, they choose our prime ministers, and they live above the law.

At my school, which was all boys, I played almost exclusively lady parts. When I say lady parts, I mean parts that were ladies. To actually play lady parts would be weird, even by English standards.

I don't hate L.A., but I'm nervous about becoming one of those people who has a ferocious interest in how films did at the box office that weekend and, you know, would want to meet for egg-white omelets in the morning.

Love scenes are extremely difficult. You're always within a millimeter of sentimentality and 'yuck.'

If every play was three weeks, I'd do lots of plays. It's just the idea of six months, I think, that might drive me a bit nuts.

I'm a great believer in eccentrically-shaped modern families. Because I've seen them work so well. And as long as everyone loves each other, it can work very well.

I dreaded the dance scene in 'Love Actually' more than having my teeth extracted.

I have known a few good marriages, but very few. And others look to me like they're pretty miserable. I don't really think that's a recipe for happiness.

Frankly, I think I'm marvelous in rehearsal! Then you turn the camera on, and it gets stiff and tight. And then you trudge back to your trailer feeling sad. That's been my experience of film acting.

I wasn't aware I was trading on my good name; I've never had a good name.

All I know is for a number of years, if someone like me called police for a burglary, a mugging, or something happened to me, chances are that a photographer or reporter would turn up before a policeman.

'The Lair of the White Worm' is quite a strange film. It's difficult to be good when you're saying lines that have been translated from Spanish to English by someone who speaks French.

I've always dreaded the sea - in fact, I get terribly seasick.

I had a kiss with Raquel Welch's daughter - she was a very naughty kisser.

I've got four houses in my street. I live in two, and the others are empty. I'll buy more as they come up, because I think it would be great to have the entire street.

I certainly hated actors and, more importantly, they hated me.

Although I'm largely doing other things in life, it's very nice occasionally to put my toe back in the waters of show business.

I'm not a great believer in marriages as an institution, or even in very long term relationships. I'm not sure we're built that way.

Throughout my life, whenever I thought I'm dancing welI, I'm not.

I get more satisfaction out of comedy stuff. I'm a laugh tart. I make no secret of that fact.

I don't do much acting anymore anyway, and not to work for 20th Century Fox is really the least of my worries.

There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.

Comedy is probably a way of dealing with anxiety. Sometimes it's a way of dealing with pain.

“Shut your eyes and see.”

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”

“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.”

“Love loves to love love.”

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”

“All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.”

“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”

“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

“Life is too short to read a bad book.”

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”

“and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

“Her lips touched his brain as they touched his lips, as though they were a vehicle of some vague speech and between them he felt an unknown and timid preasure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.”

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”