Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people I did not choose acting acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

I need a teacher quite as much as Helen. I know the education of this child will be the distinguishing event of my life if I have the brains and perseverance to accomplish it.

If you told me when I was a teen that I would end up being a teacher I would have said you're out of your mind because quite frankly I hated school.

A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'

I have sometimes been wildly despairingly acutely miserable racked with sorrow but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

I started my cooking 'career' aged 15 almost 20 years ago. At the time it was quite a shock suddenly working 75 to 80 hours a week without time to play football or other sports.

A person's worth is quite independent of their usefulness to society.

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

I'm interested in that drive that rush to judgment that is so prevalent in our society.We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do isn't it?

If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Irish how to listen society here would be quite civilized.

And I like the look on people's faces when I say I'm doing this movie called Pride and Prejudice and they kind of smile and then I say I'm in a movie called Doom and they kind of do a double take and try and put the two things together. And they never quite manage to.

I quite enjoy science fiction.

When I started in the business there was a thing called adult fantasy but nobody quite knew what it was and most publishers didn't have an adult fantasy list. They had science fiction lists which they stuck a little bit of fantasy into.

We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science which is considered not quite scientific.

Goethe died in 1832. As you know Goethe was very active in science. In fact he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore they felt he couldn't be serious.

I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books and I've read quite extensively as an adult.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

The most watched programme on the BBC after the news is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

I'm not a sad person upset the whole time but I seem to be quite emotional.

People say oh it's a shame you're not nostalgic about the '60s. Well actually it's quite good when you think of it. Wouldn't it be sad if I was sitting here wishing it back?

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre nowadays it's so much harder than it ever was.

As a kid I quite fancied the romantic Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.