I`m afraid I was very much the traditionalist. I went down on one knee and dictated a proposal which my secretary faxed over straight away.

My father was all brain and little heart.

Comedy always goes up and down but this year`s been great. Comedy is immensely strong right now, with the Green Wing" (2004) and "Nighty Night" (2004)." (Speaking in 2005)

I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you`re never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style.

Of course, it would be unfair for me to comment. Douglas (Douglas Adams) told me in the strictest confidence exactly why 42. The answer is fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious. Nonetheless amazing for that. Remarkable really. But sadly I cannot share it with anyone and the secret must go with me to the grave. Pity, because it explains so much beyond the books. It really does explain the secret of life, the universe, and everything. (On the meaning of 42 in The Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy (2005))

I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable.

Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word`s full octave.

An original idea. That can`t be too hard. The library must be full of them.

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

I`d probably want to teach at university, because children would drive me insane. I suspect it would be English literature, Shakespeare and so forth. I`ve always been deeply, deeply in love with that kind of thing.

Complete loose-stool-water. Arse-gravy of the very worst kind. (Speaking about Dan Brown`s novel, "The Da Vinci Code.")

It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.

It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand.

I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I`m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I`m just trying not to get into that sort of state again.

Moving from chair to chair, from coffee machine to coffee machine is the limit of my action in most films. But I enjoy being cast in them because I love watching them.

As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the Nineties, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it`ll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.

They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we`re not 100 per cent human, that we`re always letting ourselves down. We`re constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.

It is quite difficult to feel that I am placed somewhere between Alan Bennett and the Queen Mother, a sort of public kitten.

I could rent a room, paint it black, bolt on a few chains and call it my punishment room, Then have men in posing pouches in the background.

I don`t need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.

I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.

It was extremely important to show that Wilde`s sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.

I sometimes wonder if you Americans aren`t often fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there.

As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it`ll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.

You can`t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

But if one could go back in time, I`d love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who`s one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in Rio Bravo.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.

Oh, it takes a lot for me to walk out of a film.

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

When American TV and movies call for a twist of limey in their cocktail, it`s usually a character they`re after - supervillain, emotionally constipated academic, effete eccentric, that kind of thing.

There`s a piano in my house, and I play when no one`s around - but as soon as anyone listens, my confidence goes and I lose my sense of rhythm.

How can one not be fond of something that the "Daily Mail" despises?

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

The e-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail

There is so much we can learn from TV. It`s a window on the world.

Generally, we admire the thing we are not. On the set of "Bones" (2005) I have been amazed and impressed by the naturalness of the cast, and berate myself for sounding as if I`m speechifying instead of talking.

I don`t watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Having been an actor and a writer for so long - 20 years or so - I felt that it would be daft to go to one`s grave without having directed. It`s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.

But happiness is no respecter of persons.

On being gay: "My first words, as I was being born... I looked up at my mother and said, `that`s the last time I`m going up one of those.`"

When you`ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.

You don`t sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn`t work like that.

I`ve always believed Americans have one huge, ready-made gift when it comes to acting in front of a camera - the ability to relax. Take the supreme relaxed authenticity of a James Stewart or a George Clooney compared with the brittle contrivances of a Laurence Olivier or a Kenneth Branagh, marvelous as they are.

It is true that I have a great admiration, sometimes only just short of reverence, for the elegances and brilliances that have emerged from my favourite address in the world: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, the home of Apple Computers.

No, I love the idea that someone changes. As an actor it`s always the thing that you look for. He is someone who starts off bright, cheerful and confident and then has everything taken away from him. It`s a wonderful journey to take.

Personally, I`d never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

Digital devices rock my world.