Film producers from England

"Four hundred years ago, we would have been burnt for this film. Now, I'm suggesting that we've made an advance."

"If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money — money is all they think about — they're all nuts."

"Basil Fawlty was an easy character for me. For some reason, portraying a mean, uptight, incompetent bully comes naturally to me."

"If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself."

"No puns, no puns, no puns."

"He who laughs most, learns best."

"I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy."

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

"Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works."

"If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?"

"You see, you could never do a sketch like that these days. The audience is too uninformed. I blame the Americans. Nation of obese, violent, pig-ignorant, bible-thumping morons contaminating world culture. That’s why I spend most of my time here in France. … Beautiful, isn’t it? Just look at those olive trees. [Interviewer: This is Santa Barbara.]"

"My biggest regret? Not being knighted by the Queen. I should have been a knight, and I would have been knighted, if I hadn't written one horrible horrible Python sketch which I deeply deeply regret — [cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"]"

"When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much."

"Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching."

"A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people."

"Aping Urbanity, Oozing with Vanity Plump as a Manatee, Faking Humanity Journalistic Calamity, Intellectual Inanity Fox News Insanity, You're a profanity Hannity"

"When I was teaching, the headmaster told me "You know, the sad thing about true stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it.""

"All humans are stupid, but the smarter ones at least have a handle on their own ignorance."

"History is a history of crime. It’s a history of people who were stronger beating up people who were weaker, and it’s always been that. It’s deeply, deeply distasteful. But to pretend that one lot were worse than another — you do know the British have been slaves twice, right?"

"[People] get competitive about this business of being oppressed,… We were oppressed, the English, by the Romans for 400 [years], from about 0 to 400."

"I want reparations from Italy,… and then the Normans came over in 1066 … they were horrible people from France, and they came and colonized us for 30 years — we need reparations there too, I’m afraid."

"There's always been limitations on what they're allowed to say. Why you go to Molière and Louis XIV. I mean Molière had to be a bit careful. And there will always be limitations. I mean in England, until some ridiculous late date like 1965, all plays had to be submitted to what used to be a part of the palace called the Lord Chamberlain, and he would read it and there were hilarious letters used to go back was saying 'you may only say f--- once,' this sort of- ‘and you cannot say bugger. But you can say-' this sort of ridiculous negotiating letters."

"But I think it's particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom, where you're not checking everything you say critically before you move on. What you have to be able to do is to build without knowing where you're going because you've never been there before. That's what creativity is—you have to be allowed to build. And a lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, 'Can I get away with it? I don't think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.' You see what I mean? And that's the death of creativity. So I would say at the moment, this is a difficult time, particularly for young comedians, but you see, my audience is much older, and they're simply not interested in most of the woke attitudes. I mean, they just think that you should try and be kind to people and that's no need to complicate it, you know?"

"You can do the creation and then criticize it, but you can't do them at the same time. So if you're worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative. So I think it has a disastrous effect."

"I had a very strange experience in our stage tour. I'm sure that they all remember it differently, but I remember we started off in Brighton and worked our way front to the Midlands, and we were doing a show in Bristol, and we were doing a matinee there, and for some extraordinary reason the audience just didn't laugh. So after about four sketches of this Bristol matinee audience not laughing at something that people had been falling around at for two weeks, I realized that they were right and that it wasn't funny. And I'm being perfectly serious: if people aren't laughing, it isn't funny. And then the next house came in in the evening, and they started to laugh again in all the right places, and the show became funny again. But I mean comedy is incredibly brittle, and if something goes wrong with the atmosphere, you're dead."

"...what happens as you get older, and I promise you I'm not exaggerating, is that you begin to realize, first of all, that almost nobody knows what they're doing or what they’re talking about."

"Cleese, who enjoyed a fairly traditional, upper-middle-class upbringing, has dedicated his career to subverting the very same traditional British society which both molded him and projected him into the limelight. He has been enormously popular, in part because the British middle and upper class tend to enjoy that small moral relief which they experience through laughing at themselves. Christianity, nationalism and class have all come under Cleese’s satirical gaze while he continued to enjoy the fruits of the middle-class existence that he so tenaciously and profitably chipped away at. Now, like so many Boomers, he finds himself in the crumbling ruins of that same soppy-stern society, wishing that it would return, if only partially, and has begun a late-life declaration of war against political correctness, multiculturalism and the ‘loony left’ for which he is partly responsible."

"Hitchcock: You know that I think all actors are cattle? George Raft: Yes, I know—but I'm no actor."

"[T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself.""

"It still goes. But Pat is the nicest cattle I've ever seen."

"The lower lip definitely states that all actors are cattle—including the authorǃ"

"Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ"

"Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ"

"I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach."

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."

"The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made."

"You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee."

"I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it."

"A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive and that's within yourself. Within me I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word, said by a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions but when all these are removed and you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something. I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be."

"We do not recommend suicide as a way of life."

"I deny that I ever said actors are cattle. What I said was, "Actors should be treated like cattle.""

"Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house."

"One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs."

"Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."

"Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms."

"Puns are the highest form of literature."

"Give them pleasure – the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare."

"Self-plagiarism is style."

"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."

"[This award is] meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid."

"I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are . Had the beautiful Miss Reville not accepted a lifetime contract without options as Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock some 53 years ago, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock might be in this room tonight, not at this table but as one of the slower waiters on the floor."

"I’m not against the police; I'm just afraid of them."

"In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life."

"The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema."

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

"Hitch is a gentleman farmer who raises goose flesh."

"I'd like to know more about his relationships with women. No, on second thought, I wouldn't."

"Here is someone … who has an enormous, inordinate, neurotic fear of disorder. And that's from which he makes his art. He always has his people in a moment of disorder. They think they're in control, they think they have power, they think they have order, and then he just slips the rug out from under them to see what they're going to do."

"Like Freud, Hitchcock diagnosed the discontents that chafe and rankle beneath the decorum of civilization. Like Picasso or Dali, he registered the phenomenological threat of an abruptly modernised world."

"The man with the navy-blue voice."

"[Hitchcock, on the set of Marnie] I've never gone into detail about this, and I never will. I'll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became."

"I've made it my mission ever since to see to it that while Hitchcock may have ruined my career, I never gave him the power to ruin my life."

"[Explaining her initial silence on his behaviour] sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist [at the time]."

"During my ten-year friendship with Hitch the full name is unthinkable to anyone who knows him I have never known him fail to impress strangers with a start of surprise. He has always been chubby, but to-day he is a mellow, exuberant mountain of a man in the late thirties, whose passion is music, whose pleasure is good living, and whose genius is for visual imagery. He is a man who visualises both by instinct and training. He cannot help drawing. As he talks to you his broad, draughtsman's pencil sneaks out, and he blocks in groups and figures on the napkin or table top. When he signs his name to a letter the flourish under the signature slips into a cartoon. His Christmas cards are self-portraits, broadly satiric."

"Actually Hitch, like most heavy men, is the gentlest creature you could meet in a month of Sundays. He has done more kindly turns to out of work actors, assistants, secretaries, and mere sponging acquaintances than anyone I know in this industry. Off set he is many people's angel. On, he is frequently a fiend. Hitch has a tiny wife, who helps him with all his scenarios, and a tiny fairylike daughter, who bobs an old-fashioned curtsey to you when she speaks. These are the people who really rule his life. He is an old-fashioned person at heart, believing in the ordinary things of life, the small common decencies, the trivial events that alone make the big ones extraordinary. That is why, I am convinced, he is a good film-maker."

"When I first met Hitchcock he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures. He used to announce "Came the dawn" in black letters on a while ground, or tell us that "Heart spoke to heart in the hush of the evening" in white letters on a black ground. His title cards were both elegant and original, because the man simply could not help drawing. All his instincts were towards visualisation, and all his training towards draughtsmanship."

"[Hitchcock quoted] "I'm on a diet. And I don't do crazy tricks in my pictures any more. You know what a good time I used to have in the old days, with violent cuts and dissolves and wipes, everything in the room spinning round, standing on its head, all that sort of thing. But I've stopped all that. I haven't time to waste any more on technical tricks. I like my screen well filled, every corner used, but I've no fancy theories I want the cutting and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible. All I'm concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told, without wasting any footage. I've turned technical ascetic, kid, without either fun or luxuries.""

"I suppose what surprised me most about Hitchcock was how little he directed us. I had done a number of films for and he seemed quite meticulous in contrast. Hitchcock, however, didn't seem to direct us at all. He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face."

"When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling."

"Hitchcock finds women captivating but dangerous. She allures by nature but she is chief artificer in civilisation, a magic fabricator of persona whose very smile is an arc of deception."

"In another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, one of the most exciting and melodramatic sequences ever made, the airplane crash in mid-ocean is accomplished with a minimum of reference, in the speed and economy of image that is to be found in concentrated poems."

"To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life."

"It seems to me a long way to go just to sit in a non-drinking, non-smoking environment on the offchance your name is called. … It's as if you are entered into a race you don't particularly want to run in. All the hoops you have to jump through on these occasions: it's not my favourite occupation. Walking around in the spotlight having to be me is not something I'm particularly comfortable with or desire. I'd sooner pretend to be someone else."

"I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth."

"It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around."

"My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry. The first time that he came to London when I was in the theatre and my name was in lights for the very first time and we had the same name, and he passed the theatre with me on the way, he was going to see a matinee and me, and my mother and he passed the theatre, and I said, 'Look,' and he looked up at my name in lights, and stood there for five minutes, and I'm going, 'I want to have lunch and get back for the matinee,' and I'm with my mother, and he still stood there and so, I went back to get him and he just said, 'I never thought that I'd see my name in lights.'"

"Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life."

"When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling."

"What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I’m watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I’m discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story. Other times, you’re plotting it out with diagrams and taking a very objective view. Writing, for me, is a combination of both. You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional experience for the audience."

"With The Dark Knight you had to strike a balance of familiarity with the audience. It is a sequel, and they want familiar elements, things they liked from the first film. But you always have to be very aware that the audience is extremely ruthless in its demand for newness, novelty and freshness. At script stage, we really tried to thrash that out—are we striking that right balance?"

"The ultimate embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for."

"I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity."

"Earlier last year, following the spate of statues being toppled as part of the Black Lives Matter protests, a protester a long way from Minneapolis – in Broadstairs, Kent – sprayed the words "Dickens Was A Racist" on the Dickens House Museum. The protester was called Ian Driver and he was prompted by a letter that Dickens had written decrying the Indian Mutiny in 1857. Unquestionably, the letter is racist. However, it is strange that Driver had to go all the way to a relatively obscure piece of correspondence by Dickens to become inflamed by his racism, when, in Oliver Twist, in plain sight, and widely known to us for many, many years, has been Fagin. But maybe he doesn't count."

"It's revealing [...] Because the obvious thing to say is not that the documentary demonizes Hamas - it simply shows Hamas, through their own audio and footage - but that the documentary makes uncomfortable viewing for those who wish to believe that Hamas represents the Palestinians, both their suffering and their political purpose, rather than being inspired by Jew-hatred and violcence [sic]."

"[A]ction restarting action: all we need to reverse inertia is some sense of consequence - some sense that beyond this occurrence there is another, and that they are linked, some sense that life has chapters."

"[H]e felt frustrated, his sense of fate and direction subverted by banalities - the frustration of the man who, having thought himself following his destiny, finds he is actually on the A318 to New Malden."

"That's the thing about your destiny: how are you supposed to know it when it arrives? How are you supposed to recognise it from the random life?"

"If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage."

"Very simple. I'm putting up the money, and I also have ears."

"The host is pathetic! The show is pathetic! The audience is pathetic!"

"You know Paula, who I couldn't look at the beginning of the series... I love her to death now. I hate to admit it but I do."

"Sinitta and Jackie are my family now. I don't think of them as ex-girlfriends anymore. They are an extension of my life... It must be infuriating, but I'd never change because my ex-girlfriends are so close I couldn't imagine life without them."

"Normally, they want me to be rude to them. People come up to me and sing, and I say "That was great. Thank you." And they're like "Well, aren't you going to be rude to me?" No! When I miss auditions, contestants get upset that I'm not there, because they expect me to be cruel to them — it's some sort of badge of honor. That's how crazy everything is."

"If I tape an 11-hour day, guess which parts end up on air. Not the bits when I'm pleasant, but the parts when I'm obnoxious."

"I changed my diet and I’ve not looked back since. You feel better, you look better. I cut out a lot of the stuff I shouldn’t have been eating and that was primarily meat, dairy, wheat, sugar — those were the four main things. … Once you get into a pattern I’ve found it quite enjoyable. It has helped me sleep and I wake up feeling less tired. I noticed a massive difference in how I felt in about a week. I have more energy and focus and it wasn’t difficult. I don’t like to use the word diet because that’s the reason I never went on a diet before — the word diet makes me miserable."

"There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [blues musicians] at all. … They do now, which is very groovy."

"We have not had any disagreements about clothes, smoking or L'Wren, and this is all very hurtful for her... It is completely untrue to say that L'Wren has caused a rift between myself and the rest of the band. This is all nonsense, everyone has their own style."

"I'm pleased that the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of the expat bankers and their girlfriends that are going to be coming."

"I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes I see a line of cars and they're all painted black With flowers and my love, both never to come back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like a new born baby, it just happens every day I look inside myself and see my heart is black I see my red door, I must have it painted black Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts It's not easy facing up, when your whole world is black"

"Let's drink to the hard working people Let's drink to the salt of the earth ...Raise your glass to the hard working people ...Who need leaders but get gamblers instead"

"Childhood living is easy to do The things you wanted, I bought them for you Graceless lady, you know who I am You know I can't let you slide through my hands Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away."

"I know I've dreamed you, a sin and a lie I have my freedom but I don't have much time Faith has been broken, tears must be cried Let's do some living, after we die Wild horses couldn't drag me away Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day…"

"Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me... Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste... Drink in your summer, gather your corn... The dreams of the nighttime will vanish by dawn"

"If you think that Mick Jagger will still be doing the whole rock star thing at age fifty, well, then, you are sorely, sorely mistaken."

"I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment... it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a fucking paltry honour.'"

"I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema ... I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema."

"I got my first assignment as a director in 1927. I was slim, arrogant, intelligent, foolish, shy, cocksure, dreamy and irritating. Today, I'm no longer slim."

"[of his wife Frankie] In fact, if only I had been the perfect husband, she would have been the perfect wife."

"[Cinematographer] Jack Cardiff once asked Powell "Michael, do you make films for all types of audiences, or just for yourself?" Michael shook his head vigorously. "I make films for myself. What I express I hope most people will understand. For the rest, well, that's their problem.""

"My master in film, Buñuel, was a far greater storyteller than I. It was just that in my films miracles occur on the screen."

"We decided to go ahead with David O. (Selznick) the way hedgehogs make love: verrry carefully !"

"For ten years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art."

"Actors and technicians were being demobbed every day. Very soon the only ham actor left in the combined forces would be General George Patton."

"The great innovators have always been fearless.... I have fallen off haystacks, out of trees, over cliffs. I have been nearly drowned, shot and hanged. I have been in countless car crashes without getting a scratch. I have been alone in an office with Louis B. Mayer."

"Art is merciless observation, sympathy, imagination, and a sense of detachment that is almost cruelty."

"Everyone has heard of Canterbury if only because they murder archbishops there."

"[After Peeping Tom] When they got me on my own [the critics] gleefully sawed off the limb and jumped up and down on the corpse."

"The truth lies in black and white."

"Seventy years ago there were men like D.W. Griffith and seventy years later - now - there are not many men like Martin Scorsese. But so long as there is one there will be others, and the art of the cinema will survive."

"I am the teller of the tale, not the creator of the story."

"Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn't."

"he was determined to make Earthsea into a movie."

"A team effort is a lot of people, doing what I say."

"I think with less accomplished actors you often have to play tricks [...] You may actually want to upset them to make them look upset on the screen so they carry that forward."

"[To extras dressed as London policemen] You're just standing there! DOING NOTHING! Why should I pay you for doing nothing? I want you to run. You understand run! [...] R-U-N? RUN?"

"[From the section entitled "Winner Talking" in a personal booklet] Lunacy is a very important quality for a successful director. Most top directors are quite a bit batty. That's what makes them great. They can conceive fantasies beyond the normal mind. Another quality is just keeping alive. It is quite remarkable that no director has been murdered in cold blood on the set."

"So when I'm directing now, you see, I'm thinking of myself, I'm projecting myself in five weeks' time, sitting in a little room with two assistants, saying, "I now need a piece of film when Mr. Caine does this, or Mr. Moore does that." And if I haven't got it, I say, "Damn it, I should have gotten that." So all the time I'm imagining myself in that little X-time hence which is why I can shoot a very complicated pattern without any pre-planning. Because I'm two people. I'm Arnold Crust, the editor, and I'm Michael Winner, the director."

"I think the lesbians have come over with considerable dignity and you have come over as an arsehole."

"If I could go back, I would spend much more, earlier. No question. This sounds absolutely crass, but I would have taken private planes earlier, would have had a chauffeur and better cars earlier, I'd have bought better paintings earlier."

"[On his mother, Helen] Nice, little, white-haired lady. She was a killer. If she decided she wasn't happy about something, she was acid."

"An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station."

"I really don't care if I get anything or not. [...] I'm very glad that they recognise my considerable skills as a toilet cleaner."

"But when you look at the rubbish who are getting these awards and the absolute non-service they have given to the nation other than financing or working for political parties, you say, "What company am I in?" At least if you go straight to the House of Lords you can wear fancy dress and have a giggle."

"I don't want to do something for the sake of it. I am prepared to wait. If I wait until I am buried, too bad."

"I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN"

"[On the Swiss Dignitas assisted dying clinic] It's not a walk-in death. You don't just go in and say, "Here I am, do your worst". You have to go through a whole series of papers and re-examinations just to die. You have to fill in forms and things and go have to fly there, go back twice."

"If you’re dead, you're dead, so who cares."

"[Marlon] Brando was my best friend, [Robert] Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, even though he tried to kill me three times."

"So this is it: goodbye. I’ve been writing this column for nearly 20 years and I don’t want a carriage clock or a gold watch. I am trying to get rid of stuff, not collect it."

"Money has no value unless it is spent. (undated)"

"I think if I had my life again I would not be so utterly self-satisfied. (2004)"

"He can be a generous host and a most entertaining companion but he can also be rude and a bully, as if it amuses him to confront the world in the guise of a self-made shit. It's hard to understand why this should be so. It can't be financial disappointment because God knows he has made enough money. Perhaps what gripes him is that he wanted to be a great director and never became one. Not enough for him, I suspect, that as a producer he has few peers among his contemporaries in the British film industry."

"[Answering "What made you step up to making your own record?"] I felt like I may not get opportunities to do this ever again, so it’s about time—it’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There’s almost no such thing as ready. There’s only now. And you may as well do it now. I mean, I say that confidently as if I’m about to go bungee jumping or something—I’m not. I’m not a crazed risk taker. But I do think that, generally speaking, now is as good a time as any."

"[On performing with an American accent] It's as if you're playing left-handed. Or like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and you have a salmon."

"I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give."

"I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness."

"[on having children] They do make you less egotistical. I still manage to think about myself 98 per cent of the time, but at least there is a little window where others can impinge."

"I don't take off my helmet a lot of the time - that's one of the really good things about riding a bike. I can go all over the place and no one knows who I am."

"[On his role in Maybe Baby] I was only allowed to wear a sock. But the only way to do the shot was to be naked. It's been my worst nightmare ever since the showers at school - I couldn't believe I was living it."

"I don't believe in God, but I have this idea that if there were a God, or destiny of some kind looking down on us, that if he saw you taking anything for granted he’d take it away. So he'll be like: 'You think this is going pretty well?' Then he'll go and send down some big disaster."

"This was the tricky bit. The really tricky bit, trickiness cubed."

"O'Neal had uttered three words: 'Conspiracy to murder.' The correct word for me to repeat in an incredulous tone of voice would have been 'murder'; a very small, and psychiatrically disturbed, section of the population might have opted for the 'to'; but the one word out of the three I most definitely should not have chosen to repeat was 'conspiracy'."

"There’s an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you’re climbing into a metaphor."

"The first item was fighting under the name ‘Crostini of Mealed Tarroce, with Benatore Potatoes’ and weighed in at an impressive twelve pounds sixty-five. The Ralph Lauren blonde came over and asked me if I needed any help with the menu, and I asked her to explain what potatoes were. She didn’t laugh."

"Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes."

"We were walking through Hyde Park, going nowhere in particular, holding hands for a bit, then letting go as if holding hands wasn't one of life's big deals."

"People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls. In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over."

"I was definitely getting the hang of this skating thing. I'd started to copy a fancy cross-over turn from a German girl in front of me, and it was working pretty well. I was just about keeping up with her too, which was pleasing. She must have been about six."

"I found a cab eventually, and told the driver in fluent English that I wanted Wenceslas Square. This request, I now know, is phonically identical to the Czech phrase for ‘I am an air-brained tourist, please take everything I have’."

"Inside there was a wall three feet away. And between the wall and the door, in this unbelievably tiny space, a girl in a lemon-coloured shirt sat at a desk, with word processor, potted plant, mug of pencils, furry gonk, and wadges of orange paper. It was incredible that anyone or anything could function in such a space. It was like suddenly discovering a family of otters in one of your shoes."

"They said it was a sitting-room, but I don’t know why they’d decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture. It could rain in a room this big."

"It is the middle of December now, and we are about to travel to Switzerland - where we plan to ski a little, relax a little, and shoot a Dutch politician a little."

"It was a beautiful afternoon; one to make you realise that God really can be very good sometimes with weather and scenery."

"Dawn was definitely pulling into the station by now, and the snow had begun to throb with an electric, new-fallen whiteness. It climbed the inside of my trousers, and clung, squeakily, to the soles of my boots, and the bit just in front seemed to say ‘don’t walk on me, please don’t walk . . . oh.’"

"I always felt with Hugh that there was a secret waiting to be let out. He thinks a great deal. He is not good at selling himself. Of course, he's terrific at comedy, playing the amiables and idiots, but those who know him well, and not that many do, know that as well as doubt and insecurity he has great inner strength, huge depth and thoughtfulness."

"He's the real thing. Gifted, phenomenally intelligent, and wise."

"I've always thought of Hugh as a panda, probably because he's not naturally aggressive. Either a panda or an Opel Kadett."

"He is one of those rare people who manages to be lugubriously sexy - like a well-hung eel."

"The thing you have to realise about Hugh is that he was born prematurely disillusioned."

"You know, the relationships we 'ave, everything sort of bubbles under the surface. No one ever says what they actually mean, do they? It's all a bit pappy and rubbish."

"[After a boxing match in which Brand punched his father hard enough for the older man to fall to his knees] Shall we go down the pub and chat up some birds? Do something we're both good at?"

"BNP Member: Listen, you told us that you wanted to come up here to make a politically neutral documentary. Russell Brand: No, I can't be neutral mate it's too important, I'm not going to let you destroy my fucking planet!"

"BNP Member: I am proud to be white, and I am proud to be British. Brand: But you should find other things to be proud of mate."

"[After pleasuring a gay man named Gary in a Soho toilet] My tendencies and inclinations towards women are very, very powerful."

"When my dad left, you know, I'd give my mum hell sometimes, but really she's the one that stayed, isn't she? Poor cow, she didn't need that kind of aggravation."

"I've looked right through the Bible, start to finish, looking for the bit saying 'Jesus was the mind behind Ikea', then there's no evidence to suggest this at all."

"I saw a picture of Prince William, HRH William, in the paper today. He's going bald. I reckon by the end of next year he will be bald and I'm glad about that. Because of his playboy prince status and that, it makes me feel insecure about my own looks."

"Karl Pilkington: And I was high up. Russell Brand: I'm picturing you as a sort of vigilante Batman figure, looking down over Salford, to see if there's any crimes. Karl Pilkington: And I was in my pants. Rusell Brand: Again, like a vigilante Batman figure."

"The first time Tim Westwood did that chestbump to me, I ended up sort of cuddling his arm."

"I don't like the idea of fruit being all turned on because of cream being poured on it. How then can you eat that fruit?"

"I like pressing that emergency button on bus doors to escape."

"Russell Brand: What did you say? Trevor Lock: I just said 'ow' Russell Brand: Oh yeah, that cleared it up. He probably sank to his knees at that point and screamed 'There is no God!' You probably made him renounce the clergy. He probably went straight off after that and had it off with someone..."

"Matt Morgan: [To Russell] How have you developed pectoral muscles when you barely do anything for yourself?"

"Charles Ingram's views are so pugnacious that when I heard them, I went back to ancient Arabia, sauntered into Aladdin’s cave, said "Open, sesame," perused all the treasures and trinkets until I got Aladdin's attention, pulled down my trousers and panties and forced a genie into my dinkle's peep hole and shouted, "Aladdin, rub the lamp! You'll get more than three wishes!" He said he wished I'd leave his cave."

"Spiral's views are so enchanting that when I heard them, I cleared off to Australia, strolled up Ayres Rock to the meditating Aborigines, pulled down my trousers and pants, polished my dinkle 'til it was as stiff as a pipe, prised its end open and shouted, "Lads, who wants a blow of my didgeridoo?!" They said they faced this ignorance from the white man on an almost daily basis."

"[On a fabricated tabloid story] The Neptunian underworld king unleashed a barrage of eels from his abdomen and each of the eels was carrying a zippo lighter and as they flew by they spelt across the sky in fire 'Tara can a borrow your eyeliner please?' If you're gonna make stuff up go mental!"

"It's not really over. There's a little part of my brain that is:"

"Hmm, wa'er! If, right, your body is 90% water what have you got to drink water all the time for? Why can't you just have some crisps?"

"[On chat-up lines] Well, stick around love, cos I've got worse. The worst being, simply, "Get in the van.""

"It's like Kilroy only talking about Big Brother and there's no racism allowed."

"Blimey! Thank God my jeans are this tight- you could wear me like a puppet!"

"Let's look beyond the divisions of football teams and look at the unifying force within our souls... SEX!"

"October... Is that when there's conkers?"

"The whole thing stinks, Carr!"

"Where's Guy?!"

"(after Noel Fielding has written "peep scarf" to describe a piece of muslim apparel) That's its proper name!"

"[Piers Morgan:] Are you a more successful sexual predator now that you don't drink? [Brand:] Yes, but I resent the word "predator". I like to think of myself as a conduit of natural forces. After all, the most natural thing in the world for people to do is f*, isn't it? And people want to do it, so all you have to do is remove all the reasons why women don't actually go through with it, like pride and reputation. You just have to unpick the conditions stopping women going straight to bed with you."

"Should we stick with the Goth Detectives from when we won last year? Where's our trophy?"

"I kat you?"

"So by being offended you've sorta acknowledged that you are thick, and none of us are, so we're all back on speaking terms!"

"You'd think, if you was me, you would think this and I am me, so I'm in a perfect position to offer conclusive evidence on that... innit like when you go away on holiday, you think 'oh yeah, I'd better go away on holiday, cheer myself up, get away from it all" but when you go on holiday, you're there, so it's shit!"

"so when I was staying with him, he went 'alright, okay, so what time do you go to bed then?' and I thought 'fucking hell! he doesn't know what he's doing!! SHIIIIIIT!!' I went 'oooh, about, 10 oclock?', 'ah yeah, alright then'. YEEEES!! it's like the same feeling that as an adult I would get walking through customs with heroin in my bottom. 'I'm getting away with iiiiit!"

"If you're going to use 'theatrical' and 'bent' in such close proximity, you're going to give people the wrong impression."

"In an infinite universe; eternal time, why just do what people tell you? 'ave a laugh; do what you want."

"If that's a euphemism - an egg and spoon race, - I'm probably gold medal class."

"Could you imagine a wand that was not camp? Could you imagine, for example, Ray Winstone, with a wand? (Impersonating him) 'RIGHT OK. IT'S A KIND OF MAGIC, SIT DOWN.'"

"When asked what he puts on his hair: "Mostly orphans' tears, old clock parts, lizard's tails, spit, the concept of freedom; all up there, all shooshed up right nice and tight, like a bonfire that's never actually burned... it mutters follicular oddities into my mind.""

"I emerged from the womb, right, I was wearing a top hat and I had a cane and said: 'Mother, that was an awkward and embarrassing birth. You should be ashamed of yourself dear. Now pull your nightie down; that doctor looks salacious.' Then I trotted off outside, met up with Kenneth Williams and we both had tea, and we looked down at our dinkles with disgust."

"Let's send actual love to Robbie Williams. Get well England's Rose. One day at a time old bean. Ooh, those bloody drugs!"

"What about the rumours David Cameron smoked drugs as a schoolboy? What worries me most is that he dressed up as a schoolboy to do it, the pervert. Though perhaps, let’s not condemn him regardless. Who among us didn’t smoke just a little bit of weed at school, just to take the edge off those irksome crack come-downs? Actually, as it turns out, it’s about as good an anti-drugs campaign as you’re going to get, don’t take drugs you might end up leader of the Tories with a face like a little painted egg."

"I'm waiting for something worth waiting for."

"Is it Paul Mccartney? Is it Jimmy Page? No, it's Noel Gallagher, they look the same age!"

"Noel Fielding's not in, Noel Gallagher's not in, I think the message is don't trust Noels! Noel Edmunds, deal or no deal? No deal Noel!"

"After the revolution we will be broadcasting constant messages into a microchip inside your brains. It's gonna be great!"

"Noel Gallagher looks like a mum's mate."

"I'll riverdance while that's happening, 'cause it seems to be what I naturally do anyway."

"That diamond encrusted goat's skull is the height of good taste!"

"I'm genuinely and actually a bit like Jesus."

"This is Hollywood, mate. People bring chihuahuas round!"

"Oh no, my brain is broken."

"That's what keeps me alive, perversion and star quality."

"I believe Finland's economy is based on Moomin juice."

"Cilla Black: What are you like? Russell: A bit like Jesus but with an electric willy."

"That's right middle America, I loves Jemus!"

"Matt Morgan: Have you been thinking about your religion/new order? Russell Brand: Yes I have actually Matt, and I've got a few more theories for it to make it absolutely watertight. We'll all be living on a nice island, vegetarians doing yoga and that. We'll get rid of ideas such as the nuclear family and like in African tribes the word 'mother' will mean all female members of the tribe and the word 'father' will mean all male members. There will be a lot of [wolf whistles] … and also we're not going to have no more currency, stuff like that, no brain-bending or mind-washing and we'll all be free to explore ourselves although there will be an age of consent and it'll be the same as usual so as people don't go 'Oh no...'. Matt Morgan: Pretty watertight, isn't it? Russell Brand: Pretty watertight so far Matt, I'd like to see a political theorist drive a bus through that. If so where did he get his licence? As we're in charge of issuing bus licences and they're not issued to possible dissenters, who are immediately killed on traitor's cove; one of the nicest parts of our island, decorated with all lovely corpses."

"I love the BBC, it's a gorgeous organisation and it's just 'cos it's got vaguely socialist state-run tendencies that people like bloody old Rupert Murdoch coat it off in the Sun, and it's gotta stop!"

"It's difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you. No-one really feels self-confident deep down because it's an artificial idea. Really, people aren't that worried about what you're doing or what you're saying, so you can drift around the world relatively anonymously. You must not feel persecuted and examined. Liberate yourself from that idea that people are watching you."

"I keep hearing in my head "you are the Messiah, you are the Messiah". I think there's something wrong with my headphones."

"New York is basically a new version of York. But York just got a cathedral..."

"I don't like doing anything that makes you sweat if you don't come at the end of it."

"There's no shame in being second to Stephen Fry. Unless it's in a straight nose competition."

"Some people, I think they're called racists, say America is not ready for a black president. But, I know America to be a forward-thinking country, right, because otherwise, you know, would you have let that retarded cowboy fella be president for eight years? We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn't be trusted with a pair of scissors."

"One minute, he's just a teenage lad in Alaska having joyful unprotected sex, the next minute: 'Get to the Republican Convention!' I think that is the best safe sex message of all time: 'Use a condom, or become Republican!'"

"I remember even thinking as a 15-year-old "this sounds alright, this stuff". I was quite impacted by it, and I was very unhappy about, sort of the way you were treated, but I think that Terry generally didn't mean to be rude. But the audience seemed... kind of... I don't know... sceptical, uncomfortable and odd."

"[After reading out local newspaper accounts of multiple recent attacks on women and the dress of the suspect] However serious this sex attack was, the real crime was against fashion."

"What kind of sex attacker reneges at the first scream?"

"I know it's serious but the actual event doesn't change whether we look at it humorously or seriously."

"[Posing as a woman named 'Sarah' in a call to an emergency police phoneline] I have got some information for you. I've seen a gentleman who fits the description. He was wearing a lime green top and polka- dot trousers, and I thought, "Well, look at the state of him" (laughter). I've had someone come near my underpass. He was dressed absolutely atrociously, he looked like Timmy Mallett."

"[part of first message] Right. you wait till I come on your show. Andrew Sachs I did not do nothing with Georgina [Sachs granddaughter] … oh no, I revealed I know her name! Oh no, it's a disaster! Abort, abort! Put the phone down, put the phone down, code red, code red! I'm sorry Mr Fawlty, I'm sorry. You're a waste of space! Oh no, Jonathan ..."

"[during Sachs recorded announcement at the beginning of the second message] (interrupting) … I am too busy thinking about killing myself … Andrew, this is Russell Brand. I am so sorry about the last message - it was part of the radio show, it was a mistake … The truth is I am phoning you to ask if I can marry - that's right, marry - Georgina the granddaughter."

"[during third message] (singing ...) I'd like to apologise for the terrible attacks, Andrew Sachs, I would like to show contrition to the max, Andrew Sachs. I would like to create world peace, between the yellow, white and blacks, Andrew Sachs, Andrew Sachs. I said something I didn't have oughta, like I had sex with your granddaughter. But it was consensual and she wasn't menstrual, it was consensual lovely sex. It was full of respect I sent her a text, I've asked her to marry me, Andrew Sachs ..."

"I see that dereliction can survive in opulence; the abundantly wealthy with destitution in their stare."

"[On Melanie Phillips] In person, inconveniently, she is beautiful. Deep brown, soulful eyes, elegant features and a truthful, caring sincerity in her tone. It is surprising and bizarre, then, to see her contort on air into a taut, jabbing Gollum figure, untutored index finger fucking the audience in the face when they pipe up about Syria or whatever. Oddly, I still like her, regarding her opinions as an arbitrary appurtenance that she pops on in public, like a daft hat that says "Immigrants Out" on the brim. When the audience – who, incidentally, make all the best points – boo her, I think it a shame. The wall of condemnation is an audible confirmation that the world is a fearful and unloving place. Like most of us, Melanie just needs a cuddle."

"Only Boris [Johnson] concerns me. When I used to watch Have I Got News For You, which as a kid I was proud to watch, full stop, I loved it when Boris Johnson came on. I didn't know who he was or what he did, I didn't think about it, I just liked him. I liked his voice, his manner, his name, his vocabulary, his self-effacing charm, humour and, of course, his hair. He has catwalk hair. Vogue cover hair, Rumplestiltskin spun it out of straw, straight-out-of-bed, drop-dead, gold-thread hair."

"In this age where politics is presented as entertainment, it's the most entertaining politicians who ascend"

"I could see the room dividing as I spoke. I could hear the laughter of some and louder still silence of others. I realised that for some people this was regarded as an event with import. The magazine, the sponsors and some of those in attendance saw it as a kind of ceremony that warranted respect. In effect, it is a corporate ritual, an alliance between a media organisation, GQ, and a commercial entity, Hugo Boss. What dawned on me as the night went on is that even in apparently frivolous conditions the establishment asserts control, and won't tolerate having that assertion challenged, even flippantly, by that most beautifully adept tool: comedy."

"There is a relationship between government, media and industry that is evident even at this most spurious and superficial level. These three institutions support one another. We know that however cool a media outlet may purport to be, their primary loyalty is to their corporate backers. We know also that you cannot criticise the corporate backers openly without censorship and subsequent manipulation of this information."

"If a product has an advertisement, it means you don't need it. No-one ever has to say 'go to sleep', 'breathe', 'love people'."

"Oh also I raped someone once, [laughter] I killed her after."

"[On the Ancient Greeks having sex with children] They didn’t mind it did they [...] They were clever weren't they."

"I've done another triangle. I'm f—ing a little kid. This is great. F–k the kid with the triangle. No that's too much."

"Look at the women in this room [...] Even a bold estimate would be that I've slept with half of them. Currently."

""God, please make me a channel of your peace." The first line of the St. Francis prayer, popularized by Mother Teresa, bastardized by Margaret Thatcher, and cherished by those of us who have fallen through the cracks and floated ourselves back up with crack."

"Aren’t we all, in one way or another, trying to find a solution to the problem of reality? If I get this job, this girl, this guy, these shoes. If I pass this exam, eat this pizza, drink this booze, go on this holiday. Learn karate, learn yoga. If West Ham stay up, if my dick stays up, if I get more likes on Facebook, more fancy cookbooks, a better kitchen, cure this itchin’, if she stops bitching. Isn’t there always some kind of condition to contentment? Isn’t it always placed in the future, wrapped up in some object, either physical or ideological? I know for me it is, and as an addict that always leads me to excess and then to trouble. Do you feel like that? Are you looking for something? It’s not just me, is it?"

"The idea that voting is pointless, democracy a façade, and that no one is representing ordinary people is more resonant than ever as I leave my ordinary town behind. Amidst the guilt and anger I feel in the back of the Führer-mobile, there is hope. Whilst it’s clear that on an individual, communal, and global level that radical change is necessary, I feel a powerful, transcendent optimism. I know change is possible, I know there is an alternative, because I live a completely different life to the one I was born with. I also know that the solution is not fame or money or any transient adornment of the individual. The only Revolution that can really change the world is the one in your own consciousness, and mine has already begun."

"The reason I keep mentioning God is because I believe in God. A lot of people are surprised by that, what with it being 2014 and this being a technologically advanced secular culture. God is primarily regarded as the preserve of thick white people and angry brown people. Since Friedrich Nietzsche (deceased) declared, "God is dead," we’ve been exploring the observation of British writer G. K. Chesterton, who said, "The death of God doesn’t mean man will believe in nothing but that he will believe in anything." I’m a good example of that: at thirteen a believer in Lakeside, at eight a believer in biscuits, at seventeen a devoted wanker, at nineteen a fanatical drug user, before winding up in the monastery of celebrity."

"Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse?' No tools with which to bargain."

"Making enough money to become an effective consumer takes time, dedication, devotion. The wait is miserable. It never occurred that the objective was flawed and the rules were skewed."

"In secondary immigration, as I await processing, I sit with people for whom I imagine the experience is less of a novelty. To be blunt, non-white people. Mexican and Arabian people, mostly—I assume, I don’t look at their passports; they don’t have them, they’re behind the desks with the border police, equally trapped and obese, behind the counter, often the same color as the people they’re casually harassing. "Who does this notion of nation most suit," I wonder as I sit there, unable to use my phone. Proper rich people don’t encounter these rooms, these borders, these problems. For them the world is as it is when seen from space, without boundary, without limitation, full of fluid possibility and whispering wonder."

"The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer—at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction ("Don’t look in the mirror, Russ, it’ll fuck your head up." Mental note: "Look in mirror."). I saw that my face wasn’t my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I’d taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature. Not me, little ol’ Russ, tossed about on turbulent seas; these distinctions were engineered. On acid, these realizations are absolute. The disobedient brain is whipped into its basket like a yapping hound cowed by Cesar Millan."

"There is always something for it to think, always something for it to solve, so whenever I first start to meditate, the mantra is a tiny clear droplet lost in a deluge of sludge. I’m not a person who finds meditation a doddle or to whom yoga comes naturally. To tell you the truth, I find the whole business a bit poncey and contrary to the way I used to see myself. It’s only the fact that I decimated my life by aggressively pursuing the models of living that were most immediately available—eating, wanking, drinking, consuming, getting famous—that I was forced to look at alternatives."

"I don’t see myself as a yoga person or a man who meditates and prays and eats well and says "Namaste" or "God bless you." I became that because I exhausted all other options. There was a point, I’ll admit, when I flung myself full force into an L.A. New Age lifestyle. I’d just got divorced, and a movie I wanted to do well didn’t meet my expectations. My response to this was to stop shaving and start wearing pajamas outdoors. That is relatively typical behavior for any lunatic; we see them everywhere—twitching, twisting, hollering at their imagined foes. The difference is I was doing it in Hollywood and my pajamas looked suitably ethnic, so I think I got away with it. Although my mates have subsequently told me they were worried and, thinking about it, they did drop hints like "Trim your beard, you look like a shoe bomber" and "Stop wearing them gap-year trousers, you fuckin’ nut," but I was immune. A friend of mine, himself no stranger to mental illness, and that’s putting it lightly—he’s a right fucking fruitcake, living at his mum’s on disability benefits—said to me, "In India if you have a mental breakdown, they don’t build you back up again; they leave you in communion with God." He then looked up, mimicking, I supposed, an Indian yogi, and raised his hands and eyes skywards as if he were playing a tiny accordion just in front of his hairline. "They say, ‘Ah, he’s in conversation with Brahman now,’ and they revere you. In this country they just give you a bus pass."

"Now I’m up at the front and Tall Bloke, Long Suit, is still Sieg-Heiling; women are still jiggling and beseeching. There is an unspoken acknowledgment that I am an interloper, that I am unlike everybody else there, neither Eritreanh or Ethiopian, and that there is a risk, therefore, that I am there to mock or judge or disrupt, and I’m capable of all those things. Bellamy has clearly overcome any doubt he has in his self, if not in me, as he is now insistently inquiring, "Do you accept Jesus Christ?" He says it in English, so he definitely knows I'm not Eritrean; the jig is up. "Do you accept Jesus Christ?" he says again, like Jesus is a credit card and I’m an unhelpful waiter. The conditions of the inquiry do not suggest that there is time for me to go into my honest answer: "Yes, but there are caveats." Jesus Christ, the Son of God, sent to earth to redeem us all. Jesus Christ, the Jewish nationalist radical. Jesus Christ, the metaphor for the divine within the corporeal. Jesus Christ, the human being superimposed, literally, placed on the cross: the pagan geometric emblem that represents on the vertical plane the relationship between the earthly and the divine and on the other, horizontal plane the lateral relationships between individual humans. Christ as the end of paganism, the beginning of individualism, of idolatry. Of the acceptance that some humans are more equal than others. Christ as a reminder that we must all constantly die and be born again, moment to moment, to live forever in the now, if as Wittgenstein says, "eternity is taken not to be an infinite temporal duration but the quality of timelessness, then are we not all eternal if we live in the present." Christ as the symbol that the flesh is human, that the carnal human ape has expired, and that we can achieve no more until we transcend, until we ascend, into new conscious realms and manifest the divine. "On earth as it is in heaven""? "Do you accept Jesus Christ?" he says again, and this time gives me a bit of a prod, which he tries to pass off as shamanic but I think is actually frustration. The answer, as I have outlined above, is conditionally "yes," but the most expedient answer is a totally unconditional "yes," so that is the answer I give. "Yes.""

"When I was an atheist it was because I rejected authority, and why not reject the supreme authority of God, particularly that boring fucker on Songs of Praise. I could reject him with the unsentimental dispatch of a clipped toenail. When I got clean from drugs and alcohol, I saw that the way I’d always seen the world was limited. It will always be limited. By yielding authority to a benign power, I found a key to transcend previous limitations. Modest limitations, like being unable to survive without the use of drugs and alcohol. Until the time when I got clean, I’d had little experience of loving, powerful authority. Authority had only been corrupt or inefficient in my experience."

"How did it feel in there to you when you were a child, in the aquarium of your head? I was lonely in mine as the world swam by in immaculately choreographed schools, like an inaccessible gang of Nemos. I was only really at ease with my mum and animals, and I treated them pretty badly. If you feel how I felt, I have been taught a few techniques that might help you. Here’s one for a kick-off: You have to forgive everyone for everything. You can’t cling on to any blame that you may be using to make sense of the story of your life. Even me with my story of one nan that I love and another that I don’t—that story is being used to maintain a certain perspective of mine, a perspective that justifies the way I am, and by justifying the way I am I ensure that I stay the same. I’m no longer interested in staying the same; I’m interested in Revolution, that means I have to go back and change the story of my childhood."

"I recently researched my family tree, and quite quickly labels of class are smudged into nonsense. For a couple of generations back, it’s all very proletariat in every direction—Bethnal Green bottle-makers and jobs that belong in Dickens. But with the generational doubling that occurs, before too long it’s a muddle of all manner of colliding types: scullery maids and sculptors, officers and gentlemen."

""I believe in God," says my nan, in a way that makes the idea of an omnipotent, unifying frequency of energy manifesting matter from pure consciousness sound like a chore. An unnecessary chore at that, like cleaning under the fridge. I tell her, plucky little seven-year-old that I was, that I don’t. This pisses her off. Her faith in God is not robust enough to withstand the casual blasphemy of an agnostic tot. "Who do you think made the world, then?" I remember her demanding as fiercely as Jeremy Paxman would later insist I provide an instant global infrastructure for a post-revolutionary utopia. "Builders," I said, thinking on my feet. This flummoxed her and put her in a bad mood for the rest of the walk. If she’d hit back with "What about construction at a planetary or galactic level?" she’d’ve had me on the ropes. At that age I wouldn’t’ve been able to riposte with "an advanced species of extraterrestrials who we have been mistakenly ascribing divine attributes to due to our own technological limitations" or "a spontaneous cosmic combustion that contained at its genesis the code for all subsequent astronomical, chemical, and biological evolution." I probably would’ve just cried. Anyway, I’m supposed to be explaining the power of forgiveness, not gloating about a conflict in the early eighties in which I fared well against an old lady. Since getting clean from drugs and alcohol I have been taught that I played a part in the manufacture of all the negative beliefs and experiences from my past and I certainly play a part in their maintenance. I now look at my nan in another way. As a human being just like me, trying to cope with her own flaws and challenges. Fearful of what would become of her sick daughter, confused by the grandchild born of a match that she was averse to. Alone and approaching the end of her life, with regret and lacking a functioning system of guidance and comfort. Trying her best. Taking on the responsibility of an unusual little boy with glib, atheistic tendencies, she still behaved dutifully. Perhaps this very conversation sparked in me the spirit of metaphysical inquiry that has led to the faith in God I now have."

"It’s six months since I did the interview with Jeremy Paxman that inspired this book, and British media today is awash with halfhearted condemnations of my observation that voting is pointless and my admission that I have never voted. My assertion that other people oughtn’t vote either was born of the same instinctive rejection of the mantle of appointed social prefect that prevents me from telling teenagers to "Just Say No" to drugs. I cannot confine my patronage to the circuitry of their minuscule wisdom. "People died so you’d have the right to vote." No, they did not; they died for freedom. In the case where freedom was explicitly attached to the symbol of democratic rights, like female suffrage, I don’t imagine they’d’ve been so willing if they’d known how tokenistic voting was to become. Note too these martyrs did not achieve their ends by participating in a hollow, predefined ritual, the infertile dry hump of gestural democracy; they did it by direct action. Emily Davison, the hero of women’s suffrage, hurled herself in front of the king’s horses; she defied the tyranny that oppressed her and broke the boundaries that contained her. I imagine too that this woman would have had the rebellious perspicacity to understand that the system she was opposing would adjust to incorporate the female vote and deftly render it irrelevant. This woman, who left her job as a teacher to dedicate her life to activism, was imprisoned nine times. She used methods as severe and diverse as arson and hunger-striking to protest and at the time of her death would have been regarded as a terrorist."

"For me, it’s standard. I don’t feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary.' I might also note that I think it unlikely that people aren’t voting because I told them not to; it is more likely that they’re not voting because they are subject to the same conditions that led me not to vote."

"It was a bizarre experience visiting him in there. Not least because I, as was the custom at the time, went to the powwow armed with a yoga teacher. I was hanging out with her a lot. I took her along to the MTV Movie Awards, which I was hosting, where at one point—perhaps the summit of my own personal Everest of Hollywood kookiness—she vetoed a joke from my opening monologue. It wasn’t unspiritual or mean; I think it was about Jennifer Aniston. It was cut "for time," like the monologue was saggy. I don’t know if that makes it less weird. Tej, her name was, and she was a bloody good kundalini yoga teacher, and the lessons and techniques definitely induced interesting states of mind. Most people would’ve left it at that, but with my tendency for extremism, I first became teacher’s pet and then, in a macabre switcheroo, made the teacher into my pet. I’ve already told you I’m a sucker for a mystic costume. I’m like a wartime gal with a thing for uniforms, swooning at a G.I., and Tej’s get-up was world-class. Kundalini practitioners dress entirely in white—why not? They also wear a turban as the yogic practice they follow is derived from the Sikh faith. Tej was a lovely woman and we became good friends; I learned a lot and had a good laugh. A fair amount of that fun may have been derived, I realize in retrospect, from the novel thrill of turning up at unexpected places with a yogi. Like the MTV Movie Awards or the Ecuadorian embassy. During the production of my let’s call it experimental—with the emphasis on the "mental"—TV show Brand X (surely the last punning derivation my surname can provide), the whole of Tej’s yoga class, which consisted of about one hundred people, was uprooted and placed each morning at the studio where the show was recorded. That’s pretty mad, isn’t it? We left the comfort, tranquillity, sweet smells, and fine foods of the purpose-built yoga center to practice yoga in the functioning canteen of a TV production facility. Sometimes when you’re famous you can get away with being a lunatic. Especially if you’re like me and think the system is corrupt and rules have to be broken and conformity challenged. Before too long, you have a scenario where the teamsters who do all the heavy lifting on a TV show are confronted with the daily spectacle of a hundred yoga devotees descending on their canteen."

"It was ridiculous—he was soaking. I had to get a towel and offer him clothes that he wouldn’t take. I knew immediately that I’d like him; he just had one of those faces. I could see what he’d been like as a boy, probably always fenced off in the electronic penitentiary of a too-fast mind."

"I’ve just typed myself into a revolutionary fervor again. Every so often the fury at injustice rises up in me and makes me want to smash something or burn something, but nothing in my immediate environment belongs to me so I have to refrain."

"Folk codes of pride and togetherness, pride in both senses, honor, and togetherness. Ring-fenced emotion permitted only at three o’clock for ninety minutes in the sanctuary of the stadium. Can we march that pride out of the gates and into the streets? Can we harness it? Direct it? Use it for something less stymied by white lines and whistles, that could pour from the terraces and into the oak-and-leather chambers, the steel-and-glass towers?"

"Diablo and I fashioned my beard together in my trailer, together, as cautiously as you’d sculpt a peace treaty between two nations that prefer war to peace. The reality was that my identity outside of filmmaking had become more important to me. I was doing hours of yoga and meditation each day, I was going through a divorce, and the result was a kind of hirsute intransigence. I looked like the cliché of a terrorist and I behaved like one. Except the beard wasn’t the symbol, it was the cause. I feel some guilt about my lack of enthusiasm for acting, like it’s a bit ungrateful. Like I’ve let my teenage self down. Mind you, he let himself down a fair bit, the dirty little pervert. The dreams of my adolescent self were entangled with silvery screens and limousines, and I still feel that I need to offer up superficial sacrifices to his misguided altar. The fact is, though, I find filmmaking a boring process and its ends dubious. This could, of course, be due to the quality of the stuff I’ve done so far, as opposed to an essential rejection of an art form. Maybe if I’d been "R. P. McMurphy" or "The Elephant Man" or "Brian," I’d feel different. It just wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not just the entertainment industry that has seemed like a mirage on arrival. What about clubs and parties? When I’m there I think, "Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what all the fuss is about?" This feeling of disillusionment perhaps climaxed around the time of my divorce and the making of this subsequent film."

"This may be one of the many points in this book where you are shouting the word "hypocrite" as you read. Don’t think I’m unaware of the inevitability of such a charge. I know. I know. I’m rich, I’m famous, I have money, I’m being paid money for this book, I have had private security on and off for years. There is no doubt that I as much as anyone have to change. The only thing I can offer you in the face of this legitimate accusation is that change is something I’m good at. I know that change is a necessity. I have had to change to survive. I’d also like to add, by way of mitigation, that I could’ve just written Booky Wook 3, not mentioned global inequality, ecological meltdown, or the complicity of the entertainment industry in holding together a capitalist machine that exploits the vast majority of people, and collected my check. When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want to talk about inequality. Revolution is change. I believe in change, personal change most of all; at this time, however, we must coordinate a massive change, so, please, shout "hypocrite" at an inanimate object if you must, but please don’t dismiss the ideas in this book. Know, too, that I am prepared for change, that I have seen what fame and fortune have to offer and I know it’s not the answer. That doesn’t diminish these arguments, it enhances them. Of course I have to change as an individual, and part of that will be sharing wealth, though without systemic change will be a sweet, futile gesture."

"I should also point out that empathy, sympathy, and love are limitless resources, energies that never deplete, and at this time of dwindling fuels we should cherish and explore these inexhaustible inner resources more than ever"

"I suppose that corruption by definition is a deviation, a perversion from the intended path."

"When the physicist speaks of the expanding universe with atheistic wonder, he is feeling the same transcendent pull that Rumi describes: Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that."

""You’ll find God among the poor," they say. Is that true anymore? Is the connection between poverty and divinity simply a panacea for the world’s destitute, an assurance that they’ll be rewarded in the hereafter? Or does a material deficit provide space for God? My love of God elevates the intention of this book beyond the dry and admirable establishment of collectivized communities. I am enraptured by the magnetic pull of evolution: What is this energy that heals the body and escalates one cell to two, that repairs and creates and calculates in harmony with environment, outside of time? Where is evolution trying to go? Evolutionary psychologists would likely say the imposition of an anthropocentric concept like "trying" or "intending" is naïve, but I’m not going to ask one, they get enough airtime, the killjoys. I remain uncharmed by the incessant rationalization that requires the spirit’s capitulation. The infusion of the scientific with the philosophical is materialism. The manifesto for our salvation is not in this sparse itinerary."

"My experiences of meditation began before bearded pajama time, which a friend of mine is encouraging me to describe as a mental breakdown. I don’t think it was, as I would say that despair is a necessary ingredient of a breakdown. What did happen at the time of my divorce was that a lot of my beliefs and their outward manifestations fell away."

"When I meet a new person, I like to take them in, give them a damn good staring at, and check my files for references."

""Travel in the old ruts," quotes my friend Meredith; some ancient Chinese maxim. The way lain down by elders. Pathways through the world, pathways through the mind—it’s a shame that these days we so seldom have a guide. That our atomized worldview, mimicking scientific doctrine, sees us as separate, distinct, alone, orbiting in space, touching only an infinite void."

"I have recently begun to look for people’s "vicar" nature. It is a technique I happened upon quite by chance, but I think it has a precedent in eastern mysticism. In Buddhism they talk of each of us having a "Buddha nature," a divine self, the aspect of our total persona that is beyond our materialism and individualism. Well, that’s all well and good. What I’m into is people’s "vicar nature"—what a person would be like if they were a vicar. You can do it on anyone; it doesn’t have to be a vicar either if that isn’t your bag, it could be a rabbi or an imam or whatever. Simply think of someone you know, like, I dunno, Hulk Hogan, and imagine them as a devotional being. When I do, it helps me to see where their material persona intersects with a well-meaning spiritual aspect. Reverend Hogan would be, I suspect, a real fire-and-brimstone guy, spasming and retching in the pulpit but easily moved to tears, perhaps by the plight of a childless couple in his parish. Anyway, let’s not get carried away, it’s just a tool to help me see where a person’s essential self might dwell. Oddly, it’s really easy to do with atheists. I can imagine Richard Dawkins as a vicar in an instant, Calvinist and insistent. Dogmatic and determined, having a stern hearthside chat with a seventeen-year-old boy on the cusp of coming out. My point is that in spite of the lack of any theological title, Bobby Roth is like a priest."

"An unexpected benefit of this process is an increased compassion for others, a dawning recognition of the connection between us all. Since meditating I feel that the intuitive connection to others that I’ve always felt has been somehow enhanced. I’m lucky in that I have a mother who is pathologically loving and gentle. Who unfussily loves animals and children and tries to see the good in everyone—thank God, because in my case it was pretty well hidden. This perhaps-inherited positive trait, though, was redundant and unexpressed for much of my life as I was entangled in the sparkles and the spangles, mangled in the crackling drudge, addicted to attention and drugs."

"Consciousness, thoughts, are traveling through space in your head; we are traveling through space on this beautiful biosphere, Earth. If consciousness can traverse inner space, then perhaps it can traverse outer space. Perhaps we are as connected by consciousness as we are by the air that we all breathe. The air we inhale through the holes in our faces which tumbles into our lungs and blood, which travels through our hearts, which forms the words we speak, the air which we exhale, which is connected to all air, an unbroken entity, like all the water in all the rivers in the world, leading to the sea, touching one another."

"I suppose we must each ask of ourselves—or each other, have fun with it, it could be a quiz—two fundamental questions: 1. Are you happy with things the way they are? And 2. Do you believe that things could be better?"

"If I, so close to the peak, could glean no joy from that rarefied air, the air I was told, as soon as I’d acquired language, would absolve me, if in fact all I gleaned was the view from that peak, the vista true, that the whole climb had been a spellbound clamber up an edifice of foolishness, then what possible salvation can there be for those at the foothills or dying on the slopes or those for whom the climb is not even an option? What is their solution? Well, it’s the same solution that’s available to me, the only solution that will make any of us free. To detach the harness and fall within. Now that’s what I call an extended metaphor. In Fairfield, Iowa, then, there could be the solution. But none of us want a boring solution. The Revolution cannot be boring."

"Serenity is the first thing people with addiction issues are instructed to request: God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."

"The first thing is serenity. The agitation has to end. The itchy irritability, the restlessness, the wanting. So do the lows, the self-loathing, wretched, heavy-hearted, lead-gutted, teary-eyed, dry-mouthed misery. The pain. So do the highs. The wide-eyed, bilious highs, the cheek-chewing, trouble-brewing highs, the never-stopping-till-I-touch-the-sky highs, the up-at-dawn hitting-the-pipe highs, chasing, defacing, heart-racing highs, gagging, shagging, blagging highs. All the things we do to change the way we feel, the way the world looks and tastes: It’s all got to go. So courage is necessary. Courage to change yourself, the one thing you can change. Your attitude and actions. Neither the serenity nor the courage are available to you on your own; if they were, you would’ve found them by now—you’ve been pretty fastidious in your research. God, however you conceptualize him, will have to grant them to you. And whatever you conceptualize God as, with your human mind, your individual brain, made up of instinctive responses, training, and memories, however you conceptualize a power that’s beyond you and the decisions you’ve made so far, your conception will be extremely limited. Likely as limited as my cat’s conception of the Internet. The invisible network of interconnected portals that communicate data are beyond my cat’s comprehension. My cat’s inability to comprehend does not impede the Internet. The World Wide Web (which is incidentally quicker to say than "double-you, double-you, double-you-dot") will continue to exist, regardless of my cat’s awareness. Pray, then, for wisdom, wisdom to know the difference between things we can change and things we can’t. Likely this will be a lifetime’s work, undertaken one day at a time. Which, for humans, is the way time happens. I don’t have to live the 25th of May 2022 yet. I might never have to. I only have to live in this moment. That’s why meditation comes in handy, and practicing it as a community has benefits too. How are we to achieve real change, conditions in which practices that lead to a different type of consciousness can plausibly be pursued?"

"I believe natural instincts "go awry"; what was I really seeking when scoring and using heroin? Heroin is an opiate; opiates are painkillers. I was in spiritual pain. I have come to believe that the reason I was using drugs was to treat a spiritual malady. A flailing, disconnected tendril searching for connection and, failing to find it, I had to be sedated. When I began my life in abstinence-based recovery, living one day at a time without the use of drugs and alcohol, the impulse that drove me to seek out oblivion remained. I believe it is the impulse for union that is denied by our atomized and secular culture."

"This business of seeing divine interconnected beauty in people has been happening more and more lately, and I put it down to meditating too much."

"He came round my house the other day, Thomas Piketty, French as kissing, with eyes that twinkled like petrol in a puddle. He had, though, the demeanor I know well, that of a man besieged by diagonal stabs of insidious judgment."

"My whole life, I have sought comfort in individualism. I escaped the banality of my background with the flamboyance of my haircut, the low expectations of my class with the grandiosity of my parlance, and the fear of being ordinary by becoming a professional weirdo. In a way, my success in show business represents little more than the harvesting of my psychosis. I made my idiosyncrasies and flaws beneficial by exaggerating them."

"My indulgent mum, a single mum of an only son, would let me skip games, pandering to my teary complaints as a former fat child herself. This, I suppose, is where a father figure would come in handy, a loving, authoritative strong male to affectionately shove you into adversity. As it was, notes were written and physical activity strenuously avoided, until I discovered that some exercise had an orgasm at the end of it. This syndrome of "fatherless" boys is a much-cited problem that military organizations effectively resolve: Personal identity put aside, a male ideal upon which to focus is provided and pursued."

"With each tentative tiptoe and stumble, I had to inwardly assure myself that I was a good comedian and that my life was not pointless. "I am addicted to comfort," I thought as I tumbled into the wood chips. I have become divorced from nature; I don’t know what the names of the trees and birds are. I don’t know what berries to eat or which stars will guide me home. I don’t know how to sleep outside in a wood or skin a rabbit. We have become like living cutlets, sanitized into cellular ineptitude. They say that supermarkets have three days’ worth of food. That if there was a power cut, in three days the food would spoil. That if cash machines stopped working, if cars couldn’t be filled with fuel, if homes were denied warmth, within three days we’d be roaming the streets like pampered savages, like urban zebras with nowhere to graze. The comfort has become a prison; we’ve allowed them to turn us into waddling pipkins. What is civilization but dependency? Now, I’m not suggesting we need to become supermen; that solution has been averred before and did not end well. Prisoners of comfort, we dread the Apocalypse. What will we do without our pre-packed meals and cozy jails and soporific glowing screens rocking us comatose? The Apocalypse may not arrive in a bright white instant; it may creep into the present like a fog. All about us we may see the shipwrecked harbingers foraging in the midsts of our excess. What have we become that we can tolerate adjacent destitution? That we can amble by ragged despair at every corner? We have allowed them to sever us from God, and until we take our brothers by the hand we will find no peace."

"It felt like the end of the world. I get prophetic flashes. There, I’ve said it. There are times when I see reality unfurl—not like the future is revealed, more like the past, or the present, like I can see the projector from which the spectacle is emitted. In the moment I feel dread. I watched them—maybe it’s my own cultural indoctrination, I’ve watched a lot of films and gone on a lot of conspiratorial websites, so my mind too has been narrativized; I’m not free from tales and agendas. I saw the earth crack open and yawn belligerent fire and the sea take back her bounty. The animals in nightmarish calm know the end is nigh and move to high lands. The unduly unfurled flags are lashed by rain and untethered from their masts by lightning. All nature converges; the purple sky bears down on the cleaved soil as Earth roars. The furious ocean envelops her lover, as long-somnolent beasts rise up from the deep. Things don’t fall apart; they move suddenly inward, in vengeful implosion."

"I truly felt, ultimate objective aside, that the Marines had something beautiful about them. Fraternity, initiation, mentoring, honor, valor, duty—beautiful male attributes in a society in which masculinity is maligned. I can get a bit like that, a bit D. H. Lawrence, a bit jazzed on unexamined humanity. When I chatted on camera to a pair of perfectly assembled teen Marines who sat handsomely in their fatigues, rifles pristine and bolt upright at their sides, I was overwhelmed by the salvation that the military offers to boys that may otherwise have fallen through the cracks."

"Jesus as protagonist in the Gospels is good because, like Superman, he’s been sent from another dimension; like Superman, he’s decided to dedicate himself to saving humanity; and, like Superman, he’s got special powers: heal the sick, walk on water, food multiplication. His vulnerability is that he is part man and as such can be speared, mocked, nailed up, and, at least carnally, sacrificed."

"All prophecies stripped of acculturation and geographic ornamentation seem only to be saying, "Journey within; look behind your feelings, beyond your pain; fashion your world from what you find there.""

"All anyone’s got is theories, usually distorted by what they’ve been through or what they want. This book, for example, was written by someone from a suburban, broken home, raised in Thatcher’s Britain, where inclusive ideas and family values were dismantled. A culture in which fame and celebrity became deified and drug use among the young extremely prevalent. Where modern manifestations of tribal identity like trade unions or guilds became redundant, manufacturing industries disappeared, neoliberalism emerged, and the welfare state was all but abolished. You could probably predict the contents of this book by looking at my weekly shopping receipt from Tesco’s. Alright, Waitrose. I’m dying to paint myself as a lowborn, Wat Tyler, Essex messiah; fortunately, I’m not quite that mad. I know that that heroic myth is part of my programming. That I’m quite a funny, normal bloke, that there’s a bit of bad in the best of us and a bit of good in the worst of us, that any centralized power structure with an egocentric figure at its helm will become corrupt."

"It could be that our longing for Revolution is like our longing for perfect love, the impulse we all have for union that was for so long met by religion. However we assign these yearnings, it is difficult to ignore the obvious need for change. Some of us will ascribe it to romantic love, some to consumerism, some to utopianism. It doesn’t really matter. What is important is that for the first time in history we have the means to implement a truly representative system, the means to globally communicate it, and the conditions that require it."

"My dad, Ron Brand, was an entrepreneurial Essex man, Del Boy’d up to the hilt on Thatcher’s creed. He was a self-made and self-destructive man and intermittently tumbled either side of the line. The prevailing mentality of the time, the eighties, was "every man for himself." Unions were crushed, state interests were carved up and flogged, and council houses were sold back to the people whose efforts had built them. One of the great venture-capitalist heroes of this time, who epitomized this buccaneering spirit, was Sir James Goldsmith, Tory hero, Thatcher crush, scourge of Private Eye, and demon of the left. My dad and a lot of people from modest backgrounds admired him; there was something appealingly antiestablishment and daring in the aggressive and ingenious ways that James Goldsmith exploited the system."

"Usually, when I’ve met the people who are meant to be in a position of power, I’ve always made sure to give them a damn good soul stare—y’know, look right in their eyes, through the blackness of the pupils and into whatever conscious field exists within. Then lock the eyes on, but let them gently defocus so that the defined parameters of the visual physical go blurry and you can feel the energy behind it, the unseeable energy that isn’t made of photons. Then, if your mind is quiet, you will be informed of the quality of their essence, or at least of the manifest persona that they believe themselves to be."

"Who does a baby think he is before he can recognize his face in a mirror, before he’s taught his name, before he’s drummed into stagnant separation, cordoned off from the infinite oneness? Love is innate. We must be taught to hate, and now we must unlearn it, as the Buddhists say; let it burn, that which needs to burn, let it burn. The class system isn’t fair on them either, poor little sods—packed off to school, weaned on privatized maternity shopped in from a northern spinster. Trying to find love in the tangle of dismantled family. No one can be happy imbibing a poisoned brew. It’s poisonous for us all. They’ll gratefully sigh when we unlock them from their opulent penitentiaries, they’ll be grateful when their fallow lords and empty chambers feed the hungry and house the poor. They know contentment cannot be enjoyed when stolen. They need the Revolution as much as we do. The whole of human history is nothing new, the whole of your personal story is nothing true, you can do with it whatever you want to do—flick a switch, scratch the record off, look behind the veil. Anything you don’t want, discard; anything that hurts, let go. None of it’s real, you know—all that pain, all that regret, all that doubt, not thin enough, not a good enough mum, not a good enough son, not a good enough bum. You are enough; you’re enough; there’s nothing you can buy or try on that’s going to make you any better, because you couldn’t be any better than you are. Drag your past around if you like, an old dead decaying ox of what you think they might’ve thought or what might’ve been if you’d done what you ought. That which needs to burn, let it burn. If the idea doesn’t serve you, let it go. If it separates you from the moment, from others, from yourself, let it go."

"Or as Flight of the Conchords put it: "They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers. But what’s the real cost? ’Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got them made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?""

"Since industrialization, we have moved rapidly out of synchronicity with nature and our own nature."

"All the good things about America either came from the counterculture or were there already when the white people arrived."

"I really hate it when I think I’m on the precipice of saying something deep and empowering when it’s actually more or less a quote from Rocky IV ("If I can change and you can change, everybody can change") or a lyric from an M People song ("search for the hero inside yourself") but I’ve really got very little to add to these scattered and perennial pop cultural artifacts."

"Any corporation selling us products on the basis of anything other than utility should be revoked and shut down. Any corporation that at this time of fast-diminishing resources designs products that have in-built doomsday devices, planned obsolescence, should be shut down. All this glamour and clamor and blagging and skanking has to end."

"This phone will connect you to people everywhere, except for where you are, and sever you from God forever. Apple."

"That is why I do not vote; that is why I will never vote. Let’s instead participate in a system that is truly representative. In the next chapter we are going to look at some stuff that, if we don’t really concentrate and determinedly remain upbeat, could get all boring, and we hate that. The fact is, though, if we’re to shut up Paxman and the naysayers (good name for a band), we have to show our working out. Like in a boring maths GCSE, which I knew was pointless even as I was failing it."

"We have a culture where principles mean nothing and personalities mean everything. And I can see why it caught on—I’ve done very well out of it. My personality allows me to get away with all sorts of rubbish: riding the wrong way up a one-way street on a stolen bicycle (I didn’t steal it though; I bought it off a dodgy bloke), winking at the police as I pass, years of trouble-free promiscuity, tables at restaurants. But without principles, I was freewheeling away from God."

"So, many corporations will be "killed," according to Adbusters’ excellent suggestion. Perhaps we should use the word "cull," like people do when they want to kill something cute. "Are you killing that badger?" "No, sir, culling it." "When you’ve finished 'culling' it, will it be dead?" "A bit, yes." "So explain the difference between killing and culling?" "Well, it’s a ‘u’—and a sort of tuneful sense that the creature is being gently lulled to death rather than killed with a hammer." "And what’s the hammer you’re holding for?" "Culling." So maybe we should cull some corporations. Once we’ve culled them, their resources and materials can be returned to communities to run themselves. Outlined here is a suggestion for how a corporation could be structured more fairly."

"Me, I don’t see immigration as a real issue; for me an immigrant is just someone who used to be somewhere else, and the sooner we unite and organize to dismantle the structures that prevent all of us being free, the better I’ll feel."

"Generally speaking, when empowered as a community, or common mind, our common spirit, our common sense reaches conclusions that are beneficial for our community. Our common unity."

"It’s early in the process for me, but my infatuation with fame is waning, my need for external approval and the control of other people’s opinions is expiring. Practically I’ve decided that profits from this book will go towards creating a place where recovering addicts like me can run a business based on the ideas in this book. A café and production company run to create community, not money, democratically managed by the workforce. No bosses. No profit. No bullshit. Selling food sourced ethically, grown locally, and served by people who have had a Revolution in their own lives and are now able to learn and give back. Supporting modest creative projects, building a community of people who want to be part of something other than the toxic hegemony. We will start small but we will grow quickly because we have a limitless resource and we are providing an alternative to a dying system. There are no limits to what we can achieve if we behave collectively, responsibly, and humanely."

"The world is changing and we are awakening. These statistics give us a numerical glimpse at the visceral dissatisfaction that most of us feel. Now is the time to express it. These corrupt structures cannot be maintained without our compliance. You could vote against them, if there was anything to vote for, but there isn’t, or you could stop paying your mortgage, stop paying your taxes, stop buying stuff you don’t need. When we, the majority, unite and demonstrate our new intention, we will be invincible. If we, who are complicit by our silence, become active and disobedient. This is a pivotal time in the history of our species. We are transitioning from an ideology that places power and responsibility in the hands of the few to one where we all collectively have power. It is important that we clarify, in a manner accessible to all, which institutions and systems are beneficial and which ones have to go. It is important that we propose ideas and systems that will be advantageous, like the handful in this book, and ensure that they are presented properly. When they are inevitably disparaged by the fearful enemies of change, we must remain unified and insistent. At this climactic time, we have no choice but change. This book, written by a twerp, with minimal interaction with brilliant thinkers and uncorrupted minds, demonstrates that. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"A pound shop Enoch Powell"

"We're here on this planet for a temporary time, we should be spending our time -- some of our time pursuing leisure and joy, all of our time in a spirit of love; we've ended up somehow in this mad planet where we work all the time, most of us doing jobs that we absolutely deplore, getting up to trudge through some meaningless ritual that doesn't relate to the survival of the planet, that doesn't benefit our community."

"[Responding to unspecified forthcoming claims from the media] These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well. To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question is there another agenda at play."

"Attacks like this, a crisis like this — hurtful though it is to be accused of what I consider to be the most appalling crimes, to be accused of this is very, very painful and very hurtful. But I am being shown that there are consequences for the rather foolish way that I lived in the past. Though of course, to reiterate due to the nature of the world we live in, of course I deny any allegations of the kind that have been advanced."

"It terrifies me to contemplate, Tucker, that people like Alex Jones, and in our country, David Icke — who aside from some views that are impossible to corroborate around quite a cultist and shall we call them marginal ideas, difficult to corroborate ideas — when it comes to the subject of globalisation and the increasing authoritarianisation of our planet, appear to have been ahead of the curve."

"[On Revolution] Having read his new book — which is uniquely worthless both as an exercise in writing and as a manifesto for social change — I feel able to dismiss Brand's new self-ascriptions, both as self-taught man and revolutionary. He is neither. An autodidact is not someone who, as Brand does, summons up a convenient line from Goethe cut and pasted from the endless shallows of Wikiquote (or, more probably, gets someone else to do it). An autodidact is, rather, someone who learns German and reads the original — as my father did. As to revolutionaries — successful ones tend, unlike Brand, to have plans and strategies, which is what makes them formidable, if no fun at orgies."

"So unthreatening a revolutionary is Russell Brand that (let me now commune with the dead) Stalin would not even have bothered to have him shot. Just as I should not have bothered writing this review."

"Brand is charismatic, looks like Jesus, but, cannot deliver us from dejection, poverty, inequality, greed, corruption and hopelessness. Though all praise to him for having such faith in his own powers. It is heartening to see him mobbed by teenagers and young people. They are looking for something. But do they want more than a selfie with Brand? And if they do seek guidance and leadership, Brand, I fear, will only fail them. To say as he has done; "I will never vote and I don't think you should either," is deeply irresponsible."

"Russell Brand, clown that he is, is taken seriously by an awful lot of young men who see any criticism of the cartoon messiah's misogyny as a derail from "the real issues" (whatever they are). The fans claim they love Brand despite the fact that he talks about women as poisoned birds of paradise, sucubus-like vultures or material accoutrements of wealth ("Are you reading this on a yacht, through your Ray-Bans, with, I dunno, a pair of glistening Russian sisters," Brand asks his implicitly male reader at the start of his atrocious Revolution). I think the fans are dishonest: the sexism is part of the sell. If you know what power feels like, even if you have ever so little of it, how many people could commit to a new order with none at all?"

"As Brand holds forth on the evils of capitalism, I get the feeling that I'm talking to a clever, intransigent teenager, the only difference being that Brand has a frighteningly large audience for his blend of tosh and truth. Ten times more people follow him on Twitter than follow the prime minister David Cameron, and his political YouTube channel, The Trews (True News), though maddening both in its title and in its hectoring content, is persuading apathetic youth to feel cross about the state of the world. My son's a fan, I say."

"[After Brand claims Lucy Kellaway's son will want a photograph of their meeting] I assure him my son won't want any such thing but Brand is already coming over to my side of the table, putting an arm around me and moving his lips towards mine, while I swerve out of reach. After this embarrassing little skirmish I ask if it is the first time a woman has cringed as he tried to kiss her. He shakes his head and insists I didn’t cringe. "Your body language looked halfhearted and your face changed colour.""

"What was most depressing was the contempt in which Brand clearly held the people he claims to represent, ordinary British people, "us". ... Does he think they are dumb enough to swallow his bilge about absurd conspiracy theories, most notably the gold-plated loon's theory that the American government was responsible for destroying the twin towers? Does he really think people won't see through him when he says he is simply "open-minded" about this theory, when he clearly means "I totally believe it"?"

"This obnoxious and dishonest rigidity, often enforced by a cult-like following, is, I believe, one of the reasons why the left often struggles to build support. Brand's openness about his flaws makes him a good leader, and allows those who admire him to be good followers. He's the best thing that has happened to the left in years."

"At first when I met him, he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they're like, I can't handle the equalness [...] He didn't like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting. I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can't necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day. I let go and I was like: This isn't because of me; this is beyond me. So I have moved on from that."

"Imagine if David Icke had mystical tattoos and gleaming Hollywood teeth and wore deep, chest-grazing V-necks. That’s the vibe."

"Was Kanye West a "free speech warrior", Brand pondered, ten days before the rapper's very public spiral ended with him saying that he "loved Hitler"? Hmm. Tough one."

"In May 2007, Brand called Jimmy Savile, who suggested the pair could meet if Brand brought along a sister. Brand doesn't have a sister, so instead offered to bring a female employee — agreeing, on Savile's request, that she should be naked. "I've got a personal assistant," he said. "And part of her job description is that anyone I demand she greet, meet, massages, she has to do it. She's very attractive, Jimmy." This was four years before Savile's death and five years before details of the Jim’ll Fix It presenter's crimes were exposed."

"[On Brand's video comments preceding the media coverage of the September 2023 allegations] It’s insulting [...] And it's laughable that he would even imply that this is some kind of mainstream media conspiracy. He's not outside the mainstream – he did a Universal Pictures movie last year, he did Minions, a children's movie. He is very much part of the mainstream media, he just happens to have a YouTube channel where he talks about conspiracy theories to an audience that laps it up. And, it may sound cynical, but I do think that he was building himself an audience for years of people that would then have great distrust of any publication that came forward with allegations. He knew it was coming for a long time. And then, as for him denying that anything non-consensual happened. That's not a surprise to me. These men always deny any of the allegations brought to them – I knew he would. What he didn't deny was that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old.”"

"[By 2005–2006] Already, "Russell Brand Does Sex" was a tabloid staple. "He got me naked and pounded on top of me like a rabid dog," a woman from an Abba tribute act told the Sunday People, for example, apparently quite cheerfully. One day he'd be planning to bed Paris Hilton ("Would I bonk her brains out? Yes"), another he'd be bragging about a one-night stand with a Big Brother contestant. Generally, it was all a giggle. “HAVE you bonked Russell Brand this week?” asked the Sun, "Call us on . . ." This, after the News of the World had reported that "RANDY Russell Brand is coming to the Edinburgh Festival with women on his mind", noting that "The BB [Big Brother] host has asked for a flat across the road from the theatre where he'll star, to save time getting groupies into bed. Let's hope the bedroom action lasts longer than the walk!""

"[W]ith [Russell] Brand, his spiritual journey has been what you might expect of a bog-standard sex-case-turned-wingnut. He was previously a Buddhist, then earlier this year began endorsing a Roman Catholic prayer app called Hallow, and seems to have settled for now on whichever branch of the Anglican faith permits telly survivalists to rebirth you. "Week one as a Christian has been amazing," Brand said the other day, adding that he felt "changed, transitioned"”. Onlookers are unlikely to spot the difference. He still has a conspiracist TV portal in which viewers are treated to material on the deep state/Bill Gates/the plandemic – in short, all the usual suspects of the usual suspects. It’s hard to know how long his conversion will last. But you can’t help thinking there will only be room for one messiah in that relationship – and unfortunately, it won't be Jesus."

"War! Huh? What is it good for? Well, for start? It sorts out who is the strongest out of the two countries. Also, you get to see some amazing explosions. But, there is some people out there who not only don't enjoy the war, but they try to spoil the fun for everyone else. And those chickens is called the 'U.N.' Me went to New York to meet these player-haters."

"I is here standing outside the United Nations of Benetton. Which is where representatives from the three corners of the world come to end wars, international drug trafficking, and everything else that is a bit of a laugh."

"I is here with the geezer who was the Secretary-General of the United Nations. His name be none other than my man, Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali."

"Which is the funniest language? It's French, isn't it?"

"Is it named after Michael Jordan?"

"Does this country really exist?"

"Is that a real country?"

"With all respect, why do you give crap countries a vote?"

"In Kazakhstan the favorite hobbies are disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis."

"Thank you to every American who has not sued me so far."

"The moment I appeared the crowd started jeering and booing and shouting ‘faggot’ and spitting, I had hired a bodyguard and when the jeering started I turned to see where the bodyguard was, I could just see the back of his head as he was running out of the stadium."

"I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian."

"The thing that I love about acting is the fact that I can help people feel things, know themselves or feel less alone. It's my form of expression, in the same way that someone might paint a picture or sing a song in that you're hoping that it moves somebody outside of their own way of thinking."

"I consider myself British and have very happy memories of the UK. I spent the first 14 years of my life in England and never wanted to leave. When I was in Australia I went back to England a lot."

"Jimmy Porter: They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past."

"George Dillon: [I]t's easy to answer the ultimate questions – it saves you bothering with the immediate ones."

"This is a letter of hate. It is for you my countrymen, I mean those men of my country who have defiled it. The men with manic fingers leading the sightless, feeble, betrayed body of my country to its death."

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs."

"Archie Rice: Don't clap too hard – it's a very old building."

"Archie Rice: I'm dead behind these eyes. I'm dead, just like the whole inert, shoddy lot out there. It doesn't matter because I don't feel a thing, and neither do they."

"Archie Rice: Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you."

"John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre – a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity."

"My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing."

"The best actors always retain an air of mystery. The boring actors are the ones who give 100 per cent. One will never get to know the real Jude Law."

"[Hip-hop dancers] are stunning in what they can do. What's happening is they're starting to go to class; they're actually starting to get some professional lessons. And that, for me, is very exciting because we've always discussed fusing the different styles. And to see them take it on board now and to do different things, even ballroom, is terrific, because nobody can do what they can do. So, if they then start doing what other people can do, wow. They're going to be very dangerous contestants."

"It saddens me a great deal that, you know, so many kids turn around and say, 'My dad doesn't want me doing this.' It's this terrible image that some people have got of 'My son's going to dance' and 'Oh, my God, is he gay?' No. 1, if he is gay, then still be proud of him. What's wrong with being gay in this day and age? But No. 2, don't just associate dance with being gay. It's just so wrong, you know?""

"The minute you take away somebody the public's voting for, you're screwing with the program. There's no logic to it."

"Dance teachers should be certified in this country."

"In my day everything wasn't so PC."

"I would make a fool of myself...They are so much better than I was."

"I would hate to be accused of having got through life just by luck - I think you do create your own destiny. My mum and Dad believe in fate. I see coincidences but not a predestined pattern. If it's just about fate, then you become complacent and expect things to come your way. I like being challenged. Even when you're doing really intense, dramatic scenes that take so much out of you it's still really fun and energizing. Acting makes you feel so alive."

"...I suppose that the image people have of me is one that's quite talkative, because in interviews and that you can sometimes get nervous, and the thing when you meet people... I tend to be quite chatty just because that's just something I do. But in terms of Maps' character, I'm like him in that I'm perfectly happy in my own company. And I'm probably happiest when I'm being quiet."

"I'm really happy when I meet a beautiful girl with whom I can have a good conversation. And I can feel attracted to her after a while, but that's not love! It takes time to develop an intense feeling like love. When you start a relationship with someone, it means you have to work hard. Love is a gift that needs to be looked after and cared for."

"I'm the only kid in the world who doesn't want an eighth Harry Potter book."

"Some people think I’m gay when I meet them, which I think is awesome. It’s always good to keep them guessing. I don’t go on any blogs or chats or anything, but my friends are demons for them, and apparently someone said: ‘Daniel Radcliffe is gay. He’s got a gay face!’ I really don’t know what a gay face is!"

"The one piece of advice I would give to any actor is, if you want to go out on the street without being recognised, without even being looked at, go out with a 6ft 8in beautiful transsexual. No one gives you a second glance. Especially when you're 5ft 5in."

"There have been people who have tried to exploit me. You get chancers out there who just want to make a quick buck, but as long as you tune into them and who they are … The best thing I've learned is, if you're going out, never go out alone - you leave yourself vulnerable. If you've got someone else there you trust, they can say, be wary of that person. I probably used to be too trusting of people."

"I'm very proud of being Jewish. It means I have a good work ethic, and you get Jewish humour and you're allowed to tell Jewish jokes."

"I was like every other teenager in that sense... I think I started very early— before my teens. But not when I was on set."

"Transgender women are women, any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I."

"I don't understand girls, but I'm slowly learning."

"I'm lucky enough to have a job that I love, and a relatively down-to-earth life."

"It's not so much that they don't want me to grow up. It's that they're annoyed that I'm growing up adjusted. They'd much rather I was growing up and going wild and crashing cars."

"(on way to relax) “I just like to lock my self in a small room and listen to music and watch films all day!”"

"What everybody would love to see is me having ditched school and then just going wild. That's what I'm determined not to give them."

"When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal. I've never been one of the cool people at school, but then again, I don't get the people who are cool. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that they don't interest me."

"Stage is much more intimidating than going before the cameras, because you can really screw up, and can't do a retake."

"I would consider doing any part as long as the script is good and the film has an interesting director."

"It was very emotional, actually. In the front of the book I wrote something Anton Chekhov wrote to the woman he ended up spending the rest of his life with: "Hello, the last page of my life." Which I thought was very appropriate."

"They are a pretty amazing bunch... some people have been here for 18 hours, which is... unbelievable! I don't think I would ever wait 18 hours on something, not even an organ, that I needed. I don't think I would wait that long, I would be like, oh fine, never mind..."

"Invisibility. That would be so cool just to go anywhere without people seeing you. You could sneak into rock concerts and films and stuff. And I'd like to have Hagrid's three-head dog, because then nobody would try to fight me. I think I'd love to be a wizard in Harry's world, even though you have to face a lot of danger."

"When I get into trouble at school I'd like to take an invisibility cloak, drape it over me and sneak out the door. Or I'd like to have a 3-headed-dog because then no one would argue with me."

"In the bathtub. My dad came in and said, "Guess who they want to play Harry Potter?" I think I said the name of another actor, because I was sure it wasn't me. Then he said, "No, it's you," and I started to cry with joy. That night, I woke up at 2 in the morning and woke up mom and dad and asked, "Am I dreaming? Will I really play Harry Potter?""

"I like science and I love gym. Oh, and I like art, but I'm really bad at it. I'm just a terrible drawer. I can't draw a circle. Even with a ruler, I can't draw a straight line."

"All it takes is for me to be seen chatting up a girl for [tabloids] to, you know, make up some crappy headline about me being a sex rat or whatever they call it."

"I might like to be an actor, but there are loads of other things I'm interested in as well, like music and writing and sports. I want to keep my options open."

"Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's (Coltrane) to speak in Turkish."

"Ron's funnier than Robin Williams. The hard thing is not to laugh when the camera is rolling."

"(upon seeing the movie) I'm a bit nervous about whether people will like it, but I've seen it, and I'm sure they will. It's really good - it's quite scary, it's quite emotional. Even I cried and I don't cry easily! I cried at the end credits when my name came up, and I was, like, Oh my God! I can't believe that's my name! I've met so many people since we started filming and it's been wonderful. I've progressed so far and changed so much since the beginning. It's been like a real journey."

"Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it's the minimum that I answer myself."

"I'm thrilled of the acceptance I get abroad. The people are so hearty, warm and grateful and I feel privileged having seen so many countries and some of the greatest monuments"

"In a way, … growing up like this with Harry makes it easier to act in each of the films, because I've been through all the stuff that he's going through, like the hormones, relatively recently. So it's quite fresh in my mind. And then I suppose it's been made easier by the fact I've been playing Harry Potter since I was 12. You get to know the character so well that it makes it easier to act in the long run."

"It's good to be back filming. I just put on my glasses and then I became Harry again."

"Me and Harry (Potter) are not very good with women. I've got better now. But I think any man whoever says he has never had an awkward moment with a girl is a liar. He's either a liar or he's delusional."

"I once had a friend call me (Harry) by accident. If there's another person in the room called Harry and somebody shouts their name I do respond slightly, which is embarrassing. But no one has ever said it in the throws of passion. That would be the end of that session. Go now!"

"I support Fulham because I live two minutes away from the ground, but I'm not a massive football fan. Cricket is the game I'm obsessed with, to be honest, and also despair of."

"(about Math) Too many little numbers on one page!"

"When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal"

"This has given me a feeling of confidence, which I might not have had otherwise."

"After I read a script about three times, it sinks into my head. With Harry Potter, it took about six times because it was a lot bigger."

"(On considering himself as a heartthrob) Personally I can't see it, but if other people can, fine. Cool!"

"He is the embodiment of Fleet Street bullying, using his newspaper to peddle his Little-England, curtain-twitching Alan Partridgesque view of the world, which manages to combine sanctimonious, pompous moralising and prurient, voyeuristic, judgmental obsession, like a Victorian father masturbating secretly in his bedroom."

"I've created the Tower of Pimps. Everyone worship me."

"No, I'm not saying cool. I'm saying cool."

"Usually when Geoff punches me, he's smiling. There was no smiles. It was pure rage."

"What is Game Night?"

"Jack's got an arsehole like a clown's pocket."

"Monty, I'm not attracted to dudes. But if I had a boner for you, it's really trying right now."

"People like grapes."

"The sky is bigger than the ground."

"Would you guys still be friends with me if my name was Henry Dillmond?"

"Let's just hope I don't find any more turtles, 'cause it is really getting me depressed."

"I drank holy water blessed by the pope. It was mingin'."

"Do you actually control what your brain says?"

"I tried to bang Ray in my house, and bloody there was somebody already in there."

"If you sleep upside down, do you dream upside down?"

"Rich people always smell good."

"Would you be friends with me if I didn't have an arsehole?"

"Would you be upset if you found out your dog was just a robot and it was being driven by a lizard?"

"We'll have an office suck-off."

"Maybe we can shake the life back into him."

"Does rocks float on lava?"

"A pig never forgets, Ryan. They actually are pretty smart, I think, pigs. They can play pong or something."

"If you were a whale, water would be smaller."

"I'm feeling lucky!"

"Some people are so Scottish, it looks like it hurts them."

"I will kill all of you. All the ghosts will come."

"If we have the smegging compass, Jeremy, you don't need to look at the farting sun."

"Are you havin' my ass?"

"How up is space?"

"OK, let's make some sweet, bunty little smubbles."

"Dogs hate lettuce."

"Do you know what I found out that blew my mouth?"

"How could that have happened? ... Even if it was a hand of God … I’d read – and I don’t know how they know this – but in approximately 3000 BC there was a massive undersea volcano and earthquake, which created a tsunami wave that had to have been a couple of hundred feet high. Just off the heel of Italy. Diagonally across you’re staring right up the mouth of the Nile, so I’m wondering if that had anything to do with that."

"I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds."

"I do despair. That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion. … Can you think of a good one? A just and kind and tolerant religion? … Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god."

"I honestly wasn't paying attention in school when I was told the story of Moses. Some of the details of his life are extraordinary."

"Just stare up at the stars at night, and you'll have those corny thoughts like we all do. How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant? How on earth can we be it? It doesn't make sense. … It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there."

"I think he writes the truth. Because life is like that most of the time in some shape or form, whether it’s illness or the end of the world. Cormac’s a writer’s writer. You read his writing and think, I can do that, and then you sit down and try. And you try, dude."

"Most novelists are desperate to do what I do."

"Universe to me is, if you’d like, the final character. Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape. I think people have lost the ability to do that."

"Oh, it was always my thesis theory. It was one or two people who were relevant were... I can't remember if Hampton agreed with me or not. But I remember someone had said, “Well, isn't it corny?” I said, “Listen, I'll be the best fucking judge of that. I'm the director, okay?” So, and that, you learn -- you know, by then I'm 44, so I'm no fucking chicken. I'm a very experienced director from commercials and The Duellists and Alien. So, I'm able to, you know, answer that with confidence at the time, and say, “You know, back off, it's what it's gonna be.” Harrison, he was never -- I don't remember, actually. I think Harrison was going, “Uh, I don't know about that.” I said, “But you have to be, because Gaff, who leaves a trail of origami everywhere, will leave you a little piece of origami at the end of the movie to say, ‘I've been here, I left her alive, and I can't resist letting you know what's in your most private thoughts when you get drunk is a fucking unicorn!’” Right? So, I love Beavis and Butthead, so what should follow that is “Duh.” So now it will be revealed [in the sequel], one way or the other."

"I had a very specific moment where I had watched Blade Runner [1982] – at home on VHS, not in the cinema because I was then too young. I became obsessed with it, the beauty of the density and layering of the imagery. And then, when I was old enough, I watched Alien [1979], and as when you hear two pieces by the same musician, or read two books by the same writer, I distinctly remember realising it was the same mind behind these two different movies. I had been making my own films, just shooting things and cutting them together, but suddenly, at the age of 13 or 14, I understood directing – the closest thing to what defines filmmaking for me. Realising that there was a mind controlling that aesthetic, that feeling at the end of the film. And it wasn’t any one thing: it was photography; it was sound; it was costumes… It was control over the whole mise en scène. My realisation was very particular to Ridley Scott, and my love for his films and obsession with the way he was doing things."

"People think of him [Caligula] as a revolutionary or a figure of fun or a madman. There are so many aspects to him that we know really little about him, just the information that was given to us through a historian, a Roman historian called Suetonius, and he was from the other side of the family, so Suetonius paints Caligula as a very wicked madman, and that's the only reason that Suetonius considers why he did so many, on the face of it, crazy things. My interpretation of the character is not quite like that."

"The Roman Empire, like any other empire, was made up purely of bureaucrats, the army, the priests and everything else, and he systematically goes from one institution to the other, trying to provoke them and trying to get an action out of them, and this is why in our view the misconception is that Caligula was completely mad... Anyway, he tries to destroy the institutions. Of course, naturally, he never fails. I mean, he does fail, simply because it's impossible to destroy a bureaucracy, and I think that is a very relevant point for modern-day audiences."

"I do recall one particular night shoot… We were called to the set at four o'clock in the afternoon. As usual, nothing was ready. They'd built a set of Tiberius's grotto, on three acres, and were assembling all of the extras and background. The producers worriedly asked if I would go into Peter's trailer (he was playing Tiberius) and go through the lines with him, which we did few times.And then he told me the most remarkable story – whether it is true or not I have no idea – about his grave-robbing Etruscan tombs. He said the best way to find Etruscan jewellery and artefacts was to find the drains in the tombs, and very gingerly sift through them with your fingers because, as the bodies decompose, all of the artifacts deposit themselves into the channels. The thought of Peter O'Toole on his hands and knees in an Etruscan catacomb makes for a lovely image.We spent hours and hours in this trailer. He was smoking … it certainly wasn't tobacco. By the time we got onto the set, 12 hours had passed. We couldn't believe our eyes: the set was covered with people engaging in every sexual perversion in the book. We were totally bemused.Peter would start off his speech, "Rome was but a city..." then pause, look around, and say to me: "Are they doing the Irish jig over there?" I'd look over and there would be two dwarves and an amputee dancing around some girls splayed out on a giant dildo. This went on quite a few times."

"He's a fine actor but a shallow person... Cheap is a better word... stingy! Stingier than anyone I have ever known. In my not inconsiderable experience with people, Malcolm McDowell holds the all-time record. I don't think he ever paid for a cup of coffee. At one point he took a bunch of people out to dinner to celebrate an Anglo-ltalian football match that England had won. He took them to the most expensive place in town, ordered champagne, and made a big show of being the generous host. In the end he stuck the choreographer with the check, saying that he had forgotten to bring enough cash. Several weeks later the choreographer, a relatively poor and modest man, came to us and asked if we could repay the money Malcolm owed him. He said that Malcolm told him to collect the debt from the production because he had taken the Pets as well and they were part of Penthouse. He did that on more than one occasion, but in blatant and obvious ways that would have mortified anyone else. At the end of the production, according to industry tradition, he gave his dresser - an elderly woman who used to bathe and dress him even day - a cheap, second-hand silver pendant with her name misspelled. It couldn't have cost five dollars, and when she pointed out the mistake and gave it back to him, he accepted it cheerfully. He then offered her his signet ring from the film. A worthless prop which she again graciously refused, saying that she couldn't accept it, as it belonged to the company. "Never mind," he said, "you keep it; I'll take care of the company." The poor woman was speechless. In all the years she had dressed stars like Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Bob Mitchum, et cetera, et cetera, she had never seen anything to equal either his cheapness or the direct and unblushing way he carried it off."

"Having faith in the future starts with building confidence in one's self, being honest with one's self, and having the courage to live one's life, not perfectly, but authentically. Each one of us matters. Our choices matter. Our thoughts, words and deeds matter. Live each day with joy, and embrace the opportunities that will enable you and your community to grow and blossom."

"Each time we eat we are choosing to support a system. In our choice of agricultural production methods, we can support one which either helps our future, or one which undermines it. The same is true of our actual dietary choices we make. The healthiest diet is one rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, low in animal products. This is better for the environment, our health and of course animals. I'm a vegan because I care for animals and for the future of our planet. Additionally, a vegan diet helps to prevent and reverse a range of non-communicable diseases including heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol, type II diabetes. Each time we eat, we are either feeding disease, or fighting it."

"It wasn't actually in the Olympic Games, but I spent 12 years on the national squad. And it was a great experience, you know, to travel the world and compete at a certain level. It teaches you discipline, focus, and certainly keeps you out of trouble."

"I feel that I have a certain amount of experience and I'm still learning so much. But a director's job is so vast; they have so much to do with the preparation. You have to be great with all kinds of personalities and you have to be very patient, there's a lot of skills I'm not sure if I have. So I don't know if I'm ready to direct, but who knows what the future has."

"We chose Jason because we wanted our model to look like a normal guy. His look is just right for now: very masculine and not too male-modelly."

"The loneliness of Hester and Freddie certainly struck a chord with me. I’ve been the independent one in a relationship, but I’ve also been the one who wanted just a circle of two."

"I said to Chris, 'Dude, just hit me. Just hit me because I'm protected here and it's fine.' He's like, 'Are you sure?' I was like, 'Yeah, it will look great. Just go for it."

"It’s funny, when you use tiny sums of money, like when I started off, actually, it is equally as hard, because that money is someone’s money. It’s not a corporation, not a company, you have taken that money from friends or family, however you have raised it. It’s a funny thing coming up through filmmaking that way, it really makes you be responsible and to really appreciate the money that people are putting it."

"Horror movies have been in some way or another doing the same thing for hundreds of years: don't go down to the basement, don’t talk to that stranger, don’t have sex, don’t be a jerk to others. They’re all cautionary tales in one way or another, so the trick these days is getting an audience to invest in your story. If they're not invested in it, you’re just showing them another dark corridor with something that goes “bang” to try and scare them."

"I've been in the industry for about 13 years now, but I would say my name only got bigger once I came to America and started working for Brazzers. The exposure they get is on another level. To make it big in the industry these days you have to be able to perform, first and foremost, but a huge part of making it big in porn is marketing yourself on various social media outlets."

"Thankfully, I've never had to use the insurance policy. And although a million dollars is a lot of money, to me, my penis is priceless."

"I fell into porn by mistake, actually."

"Porn can be very uncomfortable as you must be aware of the camera and make sure they are getting the right shot, as well as if there's enough light getting in so they can see. You also have to position yourself to show off the girl, ensuring she looks the best she possibly can."

"I did something particularly heinous that allowed me to wake up. I had to lose something. Sometimes you have to lose something that is worth more to you than your drinking."

"[quoting Charles Bronson] "Tom, what I'm trying to say is, right? What I'm trying to say is, son... Is sometimes, yeah, you've gotta cut a little piece of yourself off, yeah? No matter how much it hurts, in order to grow, yeah? In order to move on. D'you know what I mean? What are you having for your tea?""

"You know, I'm not at all against CG. I really admire many films that are made, especially when they have such great design sense to them. I think that's so important, whichever medium. You use a medium for a reason."

"I think if you’re true to yourself then it will have a universality to it, that’s my belief."

"I like the process. It’s a very comfortable world to work in. I like the people as well. I’m surrounded by great artists and craftspeople who do it. Really experienced people. Finally, I’m really happy and proud to do something different. There’s a million CG movies out there and it’s good for the audience to have something different."

"Once you start thinking about what kids will find funny it’s very dangerous territory and you’ll end up with a film that lacks sincerity."

"I'm not one for the trappings of success. I drive a one-year-old Citroën Xantia and I hate shopping. I did have a share in a glider - that is as far as it goes."

"We use the word authenticity, it’s about being honest and uncynical. We strive to make the characters true; they believe the world they are living in, however ridiculous it is. We know how to make the films, but getting the story to land absolutely spot on – that’s the hardest bit."

"There’s a problem when you write for Hollywood in particular, they only read the dialogue. They call it reading down the middle. They have 10 scripts to read over the weekend, so all the bits that are in block prose, they won’t look at. But that’s the important stuff in the cinema. A cinematic script… they always say that you can watch a good film with the sound down."

"The evil of storytelling is you’re trying to make the audience complicit in murder — Kill the guy! Jump him! And then once you’ve done it, it’s like, I’ve killed this guy, now what? If you do that kind of violence in a show like this, you have to bring the audience along with you and then question their judgement."

"A lot of the challenge with TV, as opposed to making movies, is that you have to leave room for the characters in the story to tell themselves. Sometimes you don’t know where a character is going to go and what’s going to happen to them until you’ve seen the actor take that part and make it their own. Then, like novelists say, the book starts to write itself, and the characters start to tell their own story. And then, we know where they’re going, as opposed to mapping it out, step by step. We have broad, general strokes, but you’ve got to leave space for these characters to live and breathe."

"It is risky, in this cynical and mocking age, to make a determinedly traditional biopic … a film willing to focus on the good that men do."

"I think doing a documentary is one set of your muscles and doing a drama is another. You can learn from both of them -- how to place material, where you build it. I learned those lessons doing both documentaries and drama. Both of them helped the other; how to keep things interesting on camera when interviewing them, the same way you keep the actor of a drama alive and not just doing it by numbers. The dramas I do are usually character-driven. It’s very similar to doing a documentary; in a drama you’re always trying to build to something. I say to documentary directors to look at more dramas, to give it more wit so you don’t put one great thing at the beginning; structure the documentary to keep the audience’s interest. I learned a lot in documentaries about how to cut performances in dramas and to keep the audience on their toes."

"I've thought of firing myself multiple times."

"Either he’s legally insane or madly in love!’ I pick madly in love – and you can quote me on that."

"One of the ironies in social climbing is that if you are successful, your children will ultimately belong to a different class from yours. There is something sad in that this was your ambition, yet if you achieve it, you have in a sense alienated yourself from your own children."

"In the last couple of weeks I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra. Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough attention to women’s breasts?"

"Margaret Thatcher used to say: "I can't win an election and survive politically without bending over to the power of the press." Well, look what's happening now: the "leave" Brexit campaign has been a media maniac affair. Media is an occult power in our so-called civilized, enlightened society."

"Politics is stressful, it's scary, tiresome. Acting is like a breath of fresh air. They're both fictional kind of creativity: politicians are bad actors."

"It was the same approach as the first one, which was just to make sure that it was as crap as we wanted it to be. The key is to stop the stunt coordinator from coming in to make it look like a film fight. We just wanted it to be two pathetic Englishmen scared of each other, throwing their handbags at each other, basically. (on his screen fight with Colin Firth in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004))"

"To be a human being is to have to come to terms with the fact that your time here is finite. Shows that heighten that fact all speak to the reality of our own existence—and how high the stakes become as a result."

"I like to stay busy and that’s partly why I produce and I’m now directing. I just love storytelling, and as an actor, you can often feel like a cog in a wheel. I don’t want to be a cog in a wheel. I want to be the wheel. In fact, I’d rather own the whole bicycle."

"Nowhere on earth has been better at covering up racism in my opinion than Great Britain. The thing I like about living in America is that racism comes at you head on. In the UK it sneaks up behind you."

"I know this woman. We all do—the type anyway. You see them in the huge new Prada store in Milan, queuing outside the clubs in Soho, sipping skinny lattes in the hot cafés on the Avenue Montaigne—young women who mistake People magazine for news and a Japanese symbol on their backs as a sign of rebellion."

"Not everybody knows this—or cares probably—but the first law of forensic science is Locard’s Exchange Principle, and it says “Every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace.”"

"I’ve always been pretty much on the outside of any side you can find."

"The killer had obviously grasped one important concept, a thing that eludes most people who decide on her line of work—nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly."

"Set amid rolling acres of lavender, the complex of seven luxurious homes, swimming pools and lavish stables was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall patrolled by what we believed to be Albanians armed with Skorpion machine pistols. This was strange, given that the family was in the wholesale florist business. Maybe flower theft was a bigger problem in northern Greece than most people realized."

"He came toward me and I realized I was being given the singular honor denied to so many dictators and mass murderers—I was going to be thrown out of a Swiss bank."

"I have heard people say love is weak, but they’re wrong—love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things—patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And of every kind of love—the epic and the small, the noble and the base—the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all. That was the lesson I learned that day, and I’ll be forever grateful I did—some years later, deep in the ruins called the Theater of Death, it salvaged everything."

"Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them."

"I had got up in the morning and, by the time I was ready for bed it was a different planet—the world doesn’t change in front of your eyes; it changes behind your back."

"Crime intelligence reports from any police force in Europe would tell you that half of Albania was involved in the murder-for-hire business."

"The driver thought I was crazy—but then his religion thinks stoning a woman to death for adultery is reasonable, so I figured we were about even."

"We will never know exactly what the zoologist was accused of or what defense he offered because Saudi judicial proceedings, conducted in secret, aren’t concerned with time consuming niceties like witnesses, lawyers, juries, or even evidence. The system relies entirely on signed confessions obtained by the police. It’s strange how methods of torture are one of the few things that cross all racial, religious, and cultural boundaries—poor militia in Rwanda who worship ghosts use pretty much the same methods as rich Catholics supervising state security in Columbia. As a result, the Muslim cops who took the zoologist into a cell in a Jeddah prison had nothing new to offer—just a heavy-duty truck battery with special clips for the genitals and nipples."

"Despite its huge wealth, vast oil reserves, and love of high-tech American ornaments, nothing really works in Saudi Arabia."

"With each step his desperation grew—maybe every scrap of gossip he had heard, every assumption he had made added up to nothing more than a grand delusion. Like a fool, he had believed what he wanted to believe—"

"If only—but it has been my unfortunate experience that you can’t rely on divine intervention and that fate favors the bad as often as the good."

"By this stage I had switched my patronage to AA—as Tolstoy might have said, drug addicts are all alike whereas every alcoholic is crazy in his own way. This led to far more interesting meetings and I had decided that if you were going to spend your life on the wagon, you might as well be entertained."

"I mean, there’s no better alibi than being dead, is there?"

"Several guards and retainers exchanged a glance—Gaza was not somewhere to be taken lightly; it was probably the only place in the world that made Afghanistan look safe."

"The Saracen approached them and lifted the woman’s robe in order to examine her more closely. Underneath, he saw that her cotton shirt was crumpled and ripped and her jeans had lost the buttons at the fly. He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her on the trip—the outlaws who abducted her might have been devout Muslims but they were also men. Her tattered shirt barely covered her belly, and the Saracen, being a doctor, guessed from the sight of it that she was about four months pregnant. A different man—a less religious and a more humane man—might have been affected by it. But not the Saracen—the prisoners weren’t people to him, they were a gift from God."

"Apart from opium poppies and hemp plants, kidnappings for ransom had become about the only growth industry in Afghanistan."

"In the Army, as in life, sometimes you had to create a crisis in order to get people’s attention."

"The effectiveness of any operation is in inverse proportion to the number of people used."

"We’ve got one huge advantage—people believe what they see in databases. They’ve never learned the most important rule of cyberspace—computers don’t lie but liars can compute."

"“A few years after the bonfire of the mob came for him and his family. Like he said, it’s always the same—they start out burning books and end up burning people. Out of his parents and five kids, he was the only survivor. “He passed through three camps in five years—all of them death camps, including Auschwitz. Because it was such a miracle he had survived, I asked him what he had learned. “He laughed. ‘Nothing you call original,’ he said. Death’s terrible, suffering’s worse, as usual the assholes made up the majority—on both sides of the wire. “Then he thought for a moment. There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he’d learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you—just listen to them.” Whisperer turned and looked at me. “So that’s what you meant, huh? You’ve been listening to the Muslim fundamentalists?” “Yes,” I replied. “I’ve heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They’ve been burning books, Dave—the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I’ve been listening to them.” “And you don’t think we have—the people in Washington?” He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know. “Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut.”"

"Heavily armed men in uniform were everywhere, but there was nothing you could call genuine security: as usual, too many guns, not enough intelligence."

"The old Nobel Laureate in Virginia had been right when he had asked if the greatest industrial nation in history actually produced goods and machinery anymore. Millions of jobs, along with most of the country’s manufacturing base, had been exported over the decades and a great deal of the nation’s safety disappeared with them."

"I had been to Jeddah on my previous trip, so I knew it well enough. As somebody once said, there was only one thing to recommend it—say you wanted to commit suicide and couldn’t quite find the courage, two days in Jeddah would do the trick."

"I had read about it, of course, but I had never actually seen the machinery of a totalitarian state in full flight. For anyone who values privacy and freedom it’s a terrifying thing to behold."

"“Twenty-five years ago he was executed.” It shocked me. “Executed?” I said. “For what?” The director scanned a couple of documents and found the one he was looking for. “The usual—corruption on earth.” “I’m sorry, but what exactly does ‘corruption on earth’ mean?” He laughed. “Pretty much whatever we want.” Nearly all of his team found it funny too. “In this case,” he continued, “it meant that he criticized the royal family and advocated its removal.”"

"DNA doesn’t lie."

"Like the old virologist had said—sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences."

"“Not all death warrants are signed by judges or governors,” I explained. “This one was a prenup agreement.”"

"I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was duty."

"I went to open the front passenger’s door. It was locked and she indicated the rear seat. Apparently it was okay for a Muslim woman to lead a man to his death but not to share the front seat with him."

"I wandered past the stacks of drying wood, thinking about how many great skills the world had lost, how many things of value had passed without any of us even noticing. The old men with their chisels and handsaws would have once been the most highly paid members of their community and what had we put in their place? Financial engineers and young currency traders."

"“Then what happened?” I asked. “The Russian stopped calling, more important, the bills weren’t paid—I guess he either went broke or another oligarch had him killed.” Probably the latter, I thought. That was the way most business disputes were settled in Russia."

"Animation wasn't so much an imitation of life - it was a punctuation of conversation. We always stayed on the one who was talking. It made for a very simple film that was very clear, and there were no unnecessary things going on all around the edges. If I'm going to say something to you then I'm going to do it with a certain amount of gestures; in-between the times I'm completely still. This was how we managed to get through 120 seconds of footage a day, when most studios were getting through 10 seconds. We'd never move a mouth, we'd change the expression, because people were watching the hands."

"[Responding to the perceived surrealism of Clangers] They're surreal but logical. I have a strong prejudice against fantasy for its own sake. Once one gets to a point beyond where cause and effect mean anything at all, then science fiction becomes science nonsense. Everything that happened was strictly logical according to the laws of physics which happened to apply in that part of the world."

"We would go to the BBC once a year, show them the films we'd made, and they would say, "Yes, lovely, now what are you going to do next?" We would tell them, and they would say, "That sounds fine, we'll mark it in for eighteen months from now", and we would be given praise and encouragement and some money in advance."

"What matters most is the story, and it should never be sacrificed to the method. These days immense quantities of money are spent making something that doesn't call for it. As a result, to raise enough backing, children's films have to be dumbed down for the widest possible market."

"Come to think of it I must have produced some of the clumsiest animation ever to disgrace the television screen, but it didn’t matter. The viewers didn’t notice because they were enjoying the stories."

"That was all, but I was fizzing with excitement. It didn't matter what the picture was of. It didn't matter that Master Ho had stumbled rather than walked… I had done something momentous. I had opened up another dimension to the still picture. I had given it the extra dimension of time. I had made it come to life."

"I was also invited to give a couple of informal seminars to the Animation School at the RCA. These were so informal that they could hardly have been said to happen, but they taught me more than I really wanted to know about the way in which our simple craft had been inflated into a maniac pretentious pseudo-art."

"The films we made were aimed at the Head of Department at the BBC, who was about 57 at the time, and she was a nice lady called Ursula Eason, and very humane and ordinary, and full of fun. If we had studied children in any way, apart from having children, we wouldn't necessarily have succeeded in selling the films, because the woman at the BBC had fairly clear opinions of what she would find acceptable, and these were conditioned in some ways by the fact she was a middle-aged, English (well, Irish actually, if you go all the way back) lady, who was brought up as I was on Beatrix Potter, A. A. Milne, and Lewis Carroll, and all the sort of 'Founding Fathers' of English Tweeness."

"Being creative, having to do something new, invent something, alter things, in order to show you're still there is a personality fault, basically. I think a lot of people who have done creative things do so because if they don't, they cease to exist. This, I know, is true of myself, and I wouldn't wish it onto other people. There is nothing quite like as frightening as having a wife and six children and a blank piece of paper, which is your next year's feeding, and you have to pull out of the sky your livelihood. The idea of being able to live on one's creativity, where you are dubious of its continuity, is a recipe for terrible anxiety."

"All the way through, if you look at my films, you will see that my animation is very economical, but very powerful. Because, I'm not recreating life, I am illustrating a story and telling a story by an extension of the pen. I'm coming at it from the other direction, and what is the minimum amount of visual delivery that I have to do to get this to appear to be alive, which one has accepted more or less anyway that they're there, and to convey the movements, and it is surprising how much one needn't do, and how much better it is from not doing those things that animation doesn't do well."

"Their [politicians] words and phrases are skillfully chosen to keep us complacent and confident in our fairly comfortable world. We don’t usually notice this because ours is a world in which whether or not the words we are offered are true rarely makes much difference to our lives. But, out in the real world, the way words are used or misused can make the difference between life and death."

"That voice of his was loved by the nation. I mean, if I could've been Oliver Postgate, with that voice, and with his mind, and those wonderful, wonderful stories, I would have given my teeth. He puts his arms round you, figuratively speaking, and says "Look, it's all right. Don't worry. Whatever I'm on about at this moment, there's security here with me." And that's the voice that does it; I had to work to be loved, Oliver Postgate, lucky man, didn't."

"And they [Smallfilms] had a superb ear for creating sound effects that children could easily mimic the moment the programme had finished: just think about the swanny-whistle voices of the Clangers, the beatbox rhythm of Ivor's engine, or the marvellous carousel of just bloody lovely sounds that made up most of Bagpuss […] These are the sounds I hear in my own head when I remember my own childhood, and Oliver Postgate put them there."

"And all of these things, the selection of just the right characters, just the right soundtrack, and just the right tone is an incredibly hard thing to pull off in TV; incredibly hard. You can't fake it, you can't screw up your face and slog your way through it: it only occurs when an innate facet of someone's character is allowed to bleed into the production, giving it a unique personality and resonance all of it's own."