I’ve tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I’ve failed. I’ve tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can’t control. I’m really quite narrow, you know.
You have to do stand-up quite a long time before you learn how to do it well. It was probably years before I was confident enough in stand-up that I was able to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the way I wanted to talk about them.
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.
When I feel stress, I put my phone down. I’m quite strict, telling myself not to take anything else on. Then, in the evening when the kids have gone to bed, I’ll treat myself to a hot bath.
I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight ‘method’ actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape – it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because ‘Robin Hood’ was one of my favourite films.
A supermodel is kind of that first-name recognition, but I’m not quite ready for that super part yet, and I’m afraid that by the time I am, I’m going to be too old anyway.
It certainly helps that I’m quite a relaxed guy and I take things in my stride, and if you hear the odd murmur of criticism, you just stay focused on your job and doing what you’re working hard to do. I’ve always been confident in my own ability, and that’s just as important.
I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined, and my mother loved that. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me.
For some strange reason, my gay life didn’t get easier when I came out. Quite the opposite happened, really.
We now have the Black Lives Matter movement. I find that curious because this country is not quite the melting pot it’s purported to be. Black lives are unknown in some pla’ces.
Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it, putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before.
Fusion food as a concept is kind of trying to quite consciously fuse things that are sometimes quite contradictory, sometimes quite far apart, to see if they’d work.
I have a quite a good understanding of the human body, but I feel like I’ve got two different people in my head. One of them is saying, ‘You shouldn’t be eating this’ and the other is saying, ‘you know you need to.’ It’s such a challenge.
I try and have a relaxed attitude and stay quite switched off until about an hour before kick-off.
The whole ‘studly womaniser’ thing, I mean, I quite enjoy the title – it’s just not very accurate.
I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany. We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That’s quite clear. I would have lost, and by seven to three.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
The way a story makes an argument is quite different from the way a persuasive essay does it. Emotional truth and the logic of metaphors dominate.
I’m sick of having an opinion on everything. Getting older, you learn all sorts of things you’re supposed to, but I feel like it’s time, when you get older, through experience, to… I started to feel quite… what’s the word? … intimidated by seeing both sides of everything.
Rugby gave me a confidence. I was quite shy and relatively timid, but it gave me the confidence to be a little bit more out-going and back myself a bit more.
I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don’t even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own.
I feel I haven’t quite settled in Mumbai. One, it is a cultural shock for me and two, I feel no one really has the time for others in Mumbai. For instance, if you need them, they wouldn’t be there despite swearing allegiance to you.
It’s quite easy to start Trials riding. You just need a bike and you’re set.
Heath Ledger’s performance in ‘The Dark Knight’ quite simply changed the game. He raised the bar not just for actors in superhero films, but young actors everywhere; for me. His performance was dark, anarchic, dizzying, free, and totally, thrillingly, dangerous.
It’s quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.
I think as any mother would be she was absolutely over the moon. And actually we had quite an awkward situation because I knew and I knew that William had asked my father but I didn’t know if my mother knew.
I play with a lot of intensity, and I’m quite strong in man-marking.
Colombia is so different to what I know, and every aspect of the country is different to England, and I loved it. I loved the culture and the food, and the coffee was amazing. The place that we were was stunning, and it really was quite an amazing experience to film out there.
I’m quite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman, imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That’s been my approach, for the most part.
‘The Dublin Magazine’ has been edited with good taste, and it is very agreeable reading, but to speak quite candidly, I do not believe in the future of any literary journal any more than I believe in the future of the Trinity.
My father is a poet. He’s a literary giant of this country – writes in Hindi – and also quite unique because he has a Ph.D. in English Literature. He taught at Harvard University, which is one of the most prominent universities in the country.
The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements – order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.
I’m really quite simple. I plant flowers and watch them grow… I stay at home and watch the river flow.
I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
I met Madonna when I was 22, and I danced with her until I was 28. When I met her, I was a tomboy! Every time I see her, she really inspired me about one thing or another, so she’s quite important and significant person in my life.
The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
I think you go through a period as a teenager of being quite cool and unaffected by things.
The Lord has done what I wanted Him to do this week. I wanted, primarily, peace about going into pioneer Indian work. And as I analyze my feelings now, I feel quite at ease about saying that tribal work in South American jungles is the general direction of my missionary purpose.
I quite like confounding people’s expectations.
I’ve known Adrian Griffin for quite awhile now and always had him as my ‘when I get a job, I want to hire him if he isn’t already a head coach and I can get him’ list.
I grew up with low self-esteem. I didn’t think I was very pretty. I had glasses, red hair and was generally quite a spod.
Indigenous people all over the world take quite a lot of trouble with their hair and their clothes.
Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall.
Quite frankly, Russian aggression in Ukraine and its illegal occupation of Crimea remind us that we still have a good deal more work to do to guarantee the strategic vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.
I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life, if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.
I think quite spiritually of myself. I feel like I’m here to support the human evolution.
Strangely enough, when the Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’ went to number 1, which was built around my ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’ song, I had another song called ‘Rip’ go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.
The world wide web has really been quite spectacular and not something I would have predicted.
I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.
The ‘Amazon Nessie’ turned out to be a malformed pink river dolphin, so not a fish, although quite fish-like in appearance.
I did do a film that I refer to as ‘The Unpronounceable’ by a guy named Yvan Attal with Charlotte Gainsbourg. I had a bit part in there. That was quite fun, doing scenes in French.
I moved to Switzerland when I was 8, and during our breaks, we’d go to snowboard, and he’d take me to the mountains; we’d take a train. It was kind of crazy, you know. When I think about it, I wake up at 4, take a train to the mountains, sleep in the train and then go snowboard, and then come back. It was quite a mission.
Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.
