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" I was a chronically shy child. That kernel of my younger self is still there, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with it. "

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" If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic. "

" Everything people say about grandparenthood is true - it is pleasure without responsibility. It is unquestioned love. "

" A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination. "

" Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts. "

" We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our soul, if you like. "

" Every action has a consequence, so always try to be good. "

" Theatre is castigated for wallowing in self-indulgence, but it's curiously unsentimental. You simply have to move on. Everything passes. Something in me likes that. "

" There are those who leave without our needing to detain them; we have said all there is to say. "

" Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings. "

" Balance is the enemy of art. "

" I resent all organised religions. "

" What we hold in our heads - our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history - is the sum of our humanity. "

" There is in our society a gulf opening up, a kind of cultural apartheid, between those who are brought up to feel our national culture is theirs, to take ownership of it, and enjoy the privileges of that, and those who are completely disfranchised, those - for example - who will never be taken to the theatre to see Shakespeare. "

" Art is about the 'I' in life not the 'we', about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn't acknowledge the private is a life not worth having. "

" You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no. "

" The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work. "

" I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb. "

" I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways. "

" Don't ever be afraid to ask any question. "

" I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion. "

" Naming a baby is an act of poetry, for many people the only creative moment of their lives. "

" Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers. "

" All good actors are very bright. You can't be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them. "

" I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster. "