Plainly, if your life is hanging in the balance, the most important thing to you at that moment is going to see the best person for the job,

If your life, or the life of someone you love, is hanging in the balance, of course you would withstand any amount of abuse to get the job done and to get the life saved. Of course, you have to be convinced that person knows what they're doing. In real life, you have no way of knowing that you're dealing with the best person for the job. It's only on television that you can know that.

It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well as do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

Perfection is intensely annoying. Audiences were ready for a character who didn't obey the usual pieties of modern life.

When I was a small boy, 10, 11, 12, probably somewhere around there, when I first heard a blues song on the radio, it was a jolt of electricity. It grabbed me by the throat, it made me shiver. And I knew from that moment that this was for me and this would be with me for the rest of my life.

Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.