It is sweet and honorable to die for your country.
Most of the time I was in the background. I never played [the Virgin] Mary. I was always kind of the third angel.
"The Theory of Everything" is an extraordinary story because [Jane Hawing] was incredibly religious and [Stephen Hawking] was an atheist, so you have this conflict both on a domestic level between a couple in a difficult situation but also this bigger conflict of science versus religion, so it's a really fascinating project.
I think [Charles] Dickens was an extrovert and Nelly [Ternan] an introvert, and I think that Nelly saw beyond the fame and adulation and she actually loved Dickens essentially for who he was. So I think he felt like she was someone he could be himself with.
I cannot stand beer. But I love wine.
Those moments when you don't feel self-conscious, when you escape that, are when you produce something meaningful.
I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.
I can't do a linear novel. I'm just going to write what I need to write.
Pirate historians have now discovered social history, the branch of history which in the last two decades or so has been the most dynamic and inventive, in both senses of the word.
Let us regard the forests as an inheritance, given to us by nature, not to be despoiled or devastated, but to be wisely used, reverently honoured and carefully maintained. Let us regard the forests as a gift, entrusted to any of us only for transient care, to be surrendered to posterity as an unimpaired property, increased in riches and augmented in blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation.
I've never met a truly creative person who was happy and satisfied with life.