Brains are not everything.
It's always interesting to play a character that obviously has a secret.
I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.
As a kid I read Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and a few others. As an adult have admired Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and notebooks.
I have a work ethic. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it.
One of the most recent things we did [in Perceval Press] is a reissue of a fantastic documentary about Russian prison tattoo culture by Alix Lambert called The Mark of Cain. We've done books from Twilight of Empire, that actually has forewords by Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and others, to books of poetry, photography, painting - all kinds of books.
Ignorance breeds antipathy. Until I got to know how computers worked, I didn't want anything to do with them. I said, 'Well, why do I need them? I write letters. ' Which I still do.
I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.
Never negotiate with kids. They don't have life experience, and they don't have repercussions for bad decisions; they still get fed and housed.
People always think the bread of another country is better than their own.
To have an incredible increase in self esteem, all you have to do is start doing some little something. You don't have to do spectacularly dramatic things for self esteem to start going off the scale. Just make a commitment to any easy discipline. Then another one and another one.