You hope that your teenage self would like and forgive your 50-year-old self.

The first big stars, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, you know, these were gigantic stars. I even wonder sometimes whether all music actually comes from women, whether the first glimmering of music is a mother soothing a baby.

I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can't go back. You cannot go back.

I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that's not the conventional definition of hiding.

Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

Shakespeare is all big themes, like the most amazing love, or the most scary war.

According to some tallies, since 1776, the United States has been at war 93 percent of its existence, passing through a mere 21 years of peace.

When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.