Gloucester's not some chi-chi tourist town. It's a working-class seaport: a no-kidding-around down-and-dirty place.

The Holocaust story has been told and retold so many times.

I was not to the manor born.

Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.

Bond is actually my dream role. Only because it was the film I watched with my grandfathers and father from a very young age, and it would be the only way that I could actually repay them with my art form for what they've done for me.

Kids are naturally inventive and curious and creative, but most adults have had that beaten out of them. Writing is a form of play; you have to get rid of all those internal censors that we adults have, the things that say, 'Don't go there, that's not allowed.'