All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

I rewrote the ending to ‚Farewell to Arms,‘ the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It is my job to help the players react better.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

I’ve just always been a reader.

I grew up reading science fiction.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Acting is happy agony.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can’t stand it.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

I don’t feel pressure in a negative way. I like pressure. I feel excitement and calm at the same time. No pressure, no diamonds. I want pressure: pressure creates drama, creates emotion.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it’s fun, and that’s how I grow as an actor.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

The human heart is the same the world over.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

A true man hates no one.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

I play a nobody in Japan.

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.