"I would like to be as fit as I've always been. I've been blessed with good health, I've been blessed with stamina. Particularly for those great classical roles, you need an Olympian stamina. I, fortunately, have that."

"Ultimately it's a leap of faith and a leap of imagination to put yourself back in time into those conditions and situations and see how you would react."

"I don't think he's permanently affected me except in the sense that I miss him. I miss being him. Or trying to be him. He is one of a gallery of characters that have had an impact on my career and therefore my life."

"I'd gone into that restaurant and sat down and the waitress had taken my order and everybody else had seen me with this what must have looked like this creature, this animal, sitting on the top of my head!"

"You're going to go through tough times - that's life. But I say, 'Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.' See the positive in negative events."

"One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals."

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."

"I'm a dad now and whatever I'm doing in life I usually put a lot of effort into it - usually too much effort, so it kind of comes off ridiculous at times."