"It's been such a deep and amazing journey for me, getting close to John Keats, and also I love Shelley and Byron. I mean, the thing about the Romantic poets is that they've got the epitaph of romantic posthumously. They all died really young, and Keats, the youngest of them all."

"I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it's consummated, the tension's over."

"It's a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels, and I love to have a long relationship with characters."

"I took four years off after 'In the Cut' because I wanted to see who I'd be without work. I even tried being a hermit in the wilderness in New Zealand. I stayed in a warden's hut two-and-a-half hours off the Routeburn Track through the fjords on the South Island. It was early winter, so there was no electricity or running water."

"Spending only what the country can afford, rewarding savings, encouraging independence, supporting marriage: people know that these things are common sense."

"I've returned to being an amateur without any ties or strings attached, which gives me a freedom I never had before."

"There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories."

"When the United States was founded, the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships, monarchies, and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world."