Choose your friends wisely.

Live in the moment. Enjoy life because time cruelly speeds up as you get older and becomes scarily finite.

Well, I—I've experienced that the stroke was grace. It was grace, for me, to play, to get inside, grace. I was dependent. These are things that I—those, those were graceful things. You know, pushed. And just go inside, to be—you're a quote "author" and it's a cultural thing, that role, to get into your head. But it's a head game. It's a head game. And I wanted to get down to my spiritual identity. And the stroke placed me at the spiritual identity.

Compare and despair. Comparing yourself with someone else or what someone else is doing or what someone else has is a recipe for sadness. What matters is who you are and what you want.

Eight or nine years ago, I disgraced myself in the Japanese ambassador’s home in Dublin, at a celebration for my late mother-in-law’s book about living in Japan. Afterwards, when I had to apologise, she told me it was the worst night of her life and, because I was drunk enough not to remember the details, it will never not be the most embarrassing night of my life. People are filling in details even now – “Remember when you fell under the table during the first course?”

Not being able to breathe – I get very panicky at the thought.

I hope the happiest moment is still ahead of me.

Walking along Oxford Street on Saturday pulling a shopping trolley that my mother bought me. I remember saying, “I’m never going to use that!” and there I was, very grateful to have it in my life. She died before Christmas and I can’t ring her to tell her that she was right.

I talk over people all the time.

Actors live in a constant state of disappointment. I’ll never be happy with what I’ve done.