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It's not hard to get people to take a premise and accept it.
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If I had a bloody tattoo for every film I'd done, I'd be a walking billboard.
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Actually, I'm addicted to science fiction. Let me make my diction clear - I love sci-fi.
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Actors endow the villain in fiction with a warmth and quality that makes them memorable. I think we like fictional villains because they're the Mr. Hyde of our own dreams. I've met a few real villains in my time, and they weren't the least bit sympathetic.
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A solitary child growing up in Africa, you're really quite dependent on books.
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Hollywood is a far safer place to work than working abroad, because of the skill level, and because of the safety considerations that experience and unionization have created.
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Many do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.
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We live in a modest system, a galaxy called the Milky Way. If we named every star in the Milky Way and put them in the Hollywood telephone directory and stacked those telephone directories up, we'd have a pile of telephone directories 70 miles high.
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I used to fly airplanes myself, so being above the ground doesn't worry me too much.
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When you get back to fundamental questions - 'Why should anything exist?' A, I'm not sure what the answer is in terms of the science, and B, I'm not sure that science can even ask that question.
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Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.
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People have become disillusioned with Parliament, and that threatens democracy.
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My parents were always Welsh-speaking and very proud of Wales.
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Sometimes a writer just needs a hook.
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I found it marvelous that the great supporters of America in Europe are, of course, those countries that American consistency and firmness in the Cold War ended up liberating.
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As I come towards the end of my life, you get to see things in a slightly different perspective.
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I hate being out of work!
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Faith is not a rational thing, and yet to understand the universe, rationality alone will not give it to us. Our understanding of the universe must transcend the rational.
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I'm not actually sure that actors or artists should be allowed to have a family, because the focus you need, the egotism, the myopia, is just taking away from the relationship.
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Basically, theater or film is a dangerous industrial environment.
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I have a lot of respect for aspects of Islam, but I would not choose to live in a theocratically organised Muslim society.
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When you think about a walking tree, laughter is the response.
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I've always been attracted to films which explore the qualities of courage.
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How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?