Antony Sher quotes:

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

You don't expect to get the letter saying, Her Majesty would like to appoint you Knight Commander of the British Empire! It was just a completely overwhelming and exciting day.

As a gay Jewish white South African, I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are, what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are.

My grandparents all came from Lithuania to South Africa.

Reading Shakespeare is sometimes like looking through a window into a dark room. You don't see in. You see nothing but a reflection of yourself unable to see in. An unflattering image of yourself blind.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

Michael Caine should have the last word on the reviews: 'What about those reviews then?''I don't read them.''Don't read them? You wrote them didn't you?"

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

I'm always very proud of belonging to three minorities: gay, Jewish, white South African.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

I was a weak kid, not good at what all the boys at school were good at and I found that by acting, by being other people, I could liberate myself from those inadequacies.

I never regret things. It's a really dangerous thing to say, but for anyone involved in the arts, the bad things that happen make for good material. It's not a comfortable truth, but it is true.

I'm a huge fan of David Hockney. I love the way he keeps reinventing himself.

I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

I was never built to play the hero. Physically or emotionally... And they're not as rewarding to play. At least for me.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

When I am on a long run in a play, I'm not sure how I would fill the days if I did not paint or write. On a basic level, it just stops me going crazy.

As we're leaving the King's Arms Hotel after Sunday lunch, I watch a beautiful white dove walking down the wet road. A car approaches and the bird accidentally turns into the wheel rather than away from it. A gentle crunch. The car passes. A shape like a discarded napkin left in the road. Still perfectly white, no red stains, but bearing no relation anymore to the shape of a bird. A trail of white feathers flutter down the road after the car. The suddeness is very upsetting. That gentle crunch.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

I love playing outsiders, I always do.

If I could write a letter to my teenage self, I'd probably say something like: 'You ain't gonna believe what will become of you.'

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

I believe deeply in therapy. There's no one in the world who wouldn't benefit from it.

Every play I do, every book I write, every painting I paint, I will struggle with. I don't know what it's like for a project to come easy.

A lot of good actors tend to be quite introverted as people.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

The whole of my acting career is a bit of a mystery to me.

Now the dressing-room full of RSC hierarchy. Suddenly Trevor Nunn pushes his way through and 'Trevs' me. I've heard a lot about this 'Trevving', but never had it done to me. From what I'd heard, a 'Trev' is an arm round your shoulder and a sideways squeeze. But this 'Trev' is a full frontal hug, so complete and so intimate that the dressing-room instantly clears, as if by suction. I'm left alone in the arms of this famous man wondering whether it's polite to let go.

I'm a complete technophobe. I can't even email.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

Why is an actor's unintentional giggling called a 'corpse'? It seems to me quite the opposite. It proves that he's very much alive, and can still tell how silly this all is: him dressed up as someone else speaking words written by a third party.

I've been quoting the book [on Peter Sutcliffe] constantly in rehearsals. Some members of the cast have stated their disapproval that it should even have been written. Some of the women have expressed more - disgust and anger. What are they saying? They'd prefer not to know, not to understand? They'd prefer certain areas of life to be censored? Isn't that partly what breeds the Sutcliffes and the Nilsens?

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.