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.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate – there is no such thing. Presidents are human.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don’t. I feel that it’s quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.

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

I play a nobody in Japan.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

The dinosaurs aren’t remembered for much more than their bones. When humanity’s gone, what do we give to this little planet that we’re on, and what could we do collectively, removing the pride?

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

‚Eastern Promises‘ is great.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

I read poetry to save time.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

‚Leading man‘ just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I know a dramatic role is going to happen, but you just got to be patient, you know? It’s going to happen when it’s supposed to happen. I’m not rushing it. I’m not trying to make it happen tomorrow.

The progress of India is the destiny of one-sixth of humanity. And it will also mean a world more confident of its prosperity and more secure about its future.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.