British Quotes

I'm sure acting is a deeply neurotic thing to do.

I admire the world of the books and the characters that she's created, but I'm not an addict of Harry Potter. I don't feel possessive about it.

There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.

He's really sort of the devil. He's completely emotionally detached. He has no empathy. You find that in psychopaths. It's about power with Voldemort. It's an aphrodisiac for him. Power makes him feel alive.

One of the things that binds us as a family is a shared sense of humor.

You know what? Joy is the only guide. I'm going to have fun regardless.

There is a bit of me if I'm pushed in one way I might bounce back and go the opposite.

There are always going to be times when it doesn't flow as much as you were hoping. So of course I'm going to fail. And when I do fail I hope I fail better and better, again and again. I am happy to fail.

The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.

It all felt like a terribly long time. It would have meant that I had to make five movies in five years and if you don't like the movies, too bad. I guess I just wanted my freedom, and I think my life has been incredibly enhanced as a result.

I think everything I do is my early work. I can't wait to get on to the later stuff.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

I love life. I'm fascinated by human behavior because that feeds back into my work.

I fall in love with contradictions without understanding. I can't really portray them unless I do. So in a roundabout way I have to fall in love, it's my duty. If love is about understanding and understanding is compassion and compassion is love, I have to have compassion towards the world.

I don't know what my limitations are until I reach them. I look for the challenge.

I can only put myself in the process and try to learn through the process. Sometimes it will go well and sometimes it won't.

Give me a sword fight any day.

From the age of about five to twelve I was very bad, a hideous little terror who beat people up. I was a member of the Rough Gang - we went around and terrorized all the pupils in school.

But it's a strange thing when people judge you because you're not doing some big Hollywood film. Are you suggesting I should be in 'The Dukes of Hazzard?' I mean, hello?

I think academics are infuriating. For every expert on Shakespeare there is another one to cancel his theory out. It drives you up the wall. I think the greatest form of finding out the truth is through fantasy.

I've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.

Women today are bombarded with so many messages, like we should have Naomi Campbell's body and Madeleine Albright's career.

There are so many images pushed at women and so many ideas of what you're supposed to be. I think there's too much of this superwoman, this woman with a bottom like two billiard balls. There's no real celebration of just being a person.

The whole point of diaries is that other people find them and read what you've put. I did once take to writing my inner thoughts on the computer at the end of other things I was writing and ended up faxing four pages of hideous stuff to my accountant so I don't do that now.

Nobody wants to be racist and I think that most people aren't.

My books have all generated controversy.

It is horrid to smirk.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.

If we can't have comedy books written about aspects of womanhood without going into a panic attack about it, then we haven't got very far at being equal.

I've had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn't get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.