Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That’s why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

I don’t feel comfortable with violence, and I’m not sure that I film violent scenes properly, and it’s something I’m reticent to do, and yet violence is sort of in all of my films.

Writers, actors, anybody working on an ensemble-type thing, there are going to be some creaks in the beginning. It seems like there’s tremendous potential in just letting things sort of breathe a little bit. It’s...

I sort of look at some peers of mine and I think, ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong!’ I just want to tell them all to have babies and be happy and not get sucked...

What we prefer to read is sort of like sexual preference, you like what you like. Most of the time you have no clue why.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

I’ve spent most of my life doing some sort of exercise, but I’ve learned to never push myself into doing it. I know that when I am up for it I will, and when I’m...

I feel like if I ever got into some sort of rumble on the street, I will actually be able to defend myself.

I’ve been sort of traveling around the country for ten years talking about independent features.

When there’s a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces.

I don’t do much more than organise other people’s ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.

I can’t bear to look at Paris Hilton and all that. I mean, it really doesn’t grab me. I don’t think she’s interesting, and the sense of values seems sort of off-kilter.

I don’t sit there and speculate. I’m not that sort of person. It wastes time, actually.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too...

There’s lots of stuff about me being a fan of Cliff but not being gay. Which suggests that he is, but he’s not. Anyway, this is Channel 4, let their lawyers sort it out.

Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

You see another side of Draco when he’s with his dad. When Draco is with his dad, he doesn’t say anything. He keeps his mouth shut. He’s sort of bullied by his dad, so he...

My hobbies just sort of gradually became my vocation.

As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not...

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

And that’s how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I’m reading, I’m tweaking – putting in a...

Fans are afraid to meet me. They’re sort of afraid for their lives and won’t look me in the eye.

When you do the right thing, but not to any particular person, we instinctively feel that we have earned some sort of pay back. Since no-one will do that for us, we opt for self-service...

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I’d pick out an author and I would read all their books.

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

As an actor I’ve been attracted to the sort of films that I want to go and see. That tends to usually be drama-related.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, ‘Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.’

The question is the morning after. What sort of Iraq do we wake up to after the bombing? What happens in the region? What impact could it have? These are questions leaders I have spoken...

There’s nothing universal about Indian families except that the family itself is deeply important across the country. It’s sort of the fabric and anchor of our country.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

That’s a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I’d like to work with, they just aren’t doing stories that I’m sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.

It is not whether an independent Scotland could go it alone and develop its own defence forces – of course it could – but what sort of forces would they be?

I love films for the fact that it is like working under a microscope. It is sort of like a laboratory.

It’s sort of an action flick. You can’t be that funny trying to steal diamonds.

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy...

I actually watched ‘Lord of the Rings’ right when it came out, so maybe 2001 or 2002 or whenever that was. But I watched those movies, and I ended up loving them so much that...

I never desired to go into war zones. I never had any thought about it. It sort of just happened as part of the job.

I didn’t think it was my dream to be on Broadway; it just sort of became that, and then it just became me wanting it more and more and more.

Everything that’s realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

In England we are sort of very awkward.

The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.

Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

Well, I try to not view things through a prism of anti-Semitism, because often, people will use that as a sort of knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of Jews.

When my father passed away and then when later on I gave birth, those are sort of ground-breaking experiences that put everything else into perspective.

When you launch in a rocket, you’re not really flying that rocket. You’re just sort of hanging on.

For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don’t think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the...

In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.