“I have got prostate cancer, and I have to keep monitoring that. It's no problem, it's under control and I'm very cool about it, but other people are dying from it.”

“I'm not quite as cool as I would like to be, really.”

“Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.”

“I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.”

“The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.”

“I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book.”

“I am not saying that Hitler was a choir boy. But I am saying, let him who was innocent in the Second World War cast the first stone.”

“Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix.”

“Pride is ugly. It says, 'If you succeed, I am a failure.'”

“I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficul...”

“Go for the hum.”

“Of the big five factors in happinessflexible schedule, imagination, diet, exercise, and sleepmy pick for the most important is exercise.”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The moral of the tale is, don't live for the approval of others. The real you is here to find out the secret of life, not to satisfy someone else's opinion.”