Life is about making plans from which you deviate, almost always. If you are lucky, you do come up with a plan.

I went to a comprehensive school and didn't go to university.

I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

The Chinese say, 'It's good to live in interesting times.'

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.

My experience of great storytelling, working with classics, is just finding a way to present it simply but let the story do its own work, or be an invite to the audience's imagination.

I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.'

Mozart had a tremendously fertile and creative ear for a catchy tune.

I only really cast people who are desperate to be in it - who were dying to be in it, whose talent I believed in and were dead ready to do the work that was necessary.

I remember the first book I bought, when I was about 11... Dad said, 'What have you got that for? What are libraries for?'

What happens is that with difficult processes on a film, they get very intensely compressed because a clock is ticking.

I saw Derek Jacobi play Hamlet when I was 17, and he directed me as Hamlet when I was 27, and I directed him as Claudius in 'Hamlet' when I was 35, and I'm hoping we meet again in some other production of Hamlet before we both toddle off.

I think I do have a way of predicting - not always accurately - what is a nerve-wracking day for actors, what may be a difficult scene or a difficult moment, how small - and it may be down to one line - a thing maybe that is upsetting or undermining a performance.

I've always loved the Bond films.

Shakespeare is rhythmic; he is musical in the sense that he likes poetry, and he's musical because he constantly refers to settings where there's singing and dancing.

I was stuck in a wheelchair playing this deranged villain. I felt this mass amount of rage at being so confined. I thought, 'What can I do that is the direct opposite of this situation?' The only thing I could think of was that I could sing and dance.

The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.

I love thrillers, and I always have.

I think A Midsummer Night's Dream would be terrific because of the transformations that occur. Or The Tempest, things like that. Extraordinary larger than life or supernatural element.

I am a long-time hide-behind-the-sofa-in-the-early-Doctor Who-in-the-1960s fan.

Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.

I suppose, at 50, you value things in a different way. So you value connections, you value your friendships, you value your health, and you are much more aware of time passing.

I'm by no means an opera buff.

How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

My parents are the reason I wanted to make Shakespeare available to ordinary people.

In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.

I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.

A brother who is unhappy is a dangerous relative to have.

I read the final Wallander novel, 'The Troubled Man,' not long after it was published.