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.

The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right?

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

It is true, there was no public-school system, and the reason for it was very plain. The wealth of the upper classes enabled them to have private tutors.

You cannot bring in two or three top-class players if you don't have the money. You have to sell.