My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.
Was I believer in Enron Corporation? Yes, sir, I was.
I have an unconscious burglar living in my mind: If I read something, it's mine. I can read Middle English stories, Geoffrey Chaucer or Sir Thomas Malory, but once I start moving in the direction of contemporary fantasy, my mind begins to take over.
I read 'The Hobbit' while at school. It was OK; can't really remember too much from there, other than the fact I was 10! I never read it again until the script for the film, but it has to be an amazing story when you know Sir Peter Jackson has made three films out of it.
Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.
I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.
I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.
Yes, sir. I'm a real Southern boy. I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.
The very idea of true patriotism is lost, and the term has been prostituted to the very worst of purposes. A patriot, sir! Why, patriots spring up like mushrooms!
Oh, Mr Coward, sir - I could never have an affair with you, because you remind me of my father!
But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
I hadn't even watched '24' before, and the audition was kind of far away. When I got the material, there wasn't a character yet, so it almost seemed like an assistant to Jack Bauer saying, 'Yes, sir. No, sir.'
Vita Sackville-West is one of my favorite female icons. She was a writer and a prolific gardener, but she also had a relationship with Virginia Woolf, and she was married to Sir Harold Nicolson. She was a woman who lived outside of norms.
Many, many years ago, I stood on the stage and told bad jokes and did Sophie Tucker as an impersonation, and nobody looked up; and suddenly, I looked down and said, 'Sir, I'm getting fed up with you. Either you watch, or I'm going to suck your neck,' or words to that effect, and suddenly people started to laugh.
We must take positions. Our weakness in the West is born of the fact of so-called 'objectivity.' Objectivity does not exist - it cannot exist!... The word is a hypocrisy which is sustained by the lie that the truth stays in the middle. No, sir: Sometimes truth stays on one side only.
I was not up stairs when he came home; no, sir.
I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things.
Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.
'Tum Jo Mile' came as a surprise. Vivek and Kumaar sir, who has written the song, sent me the track just to listen. I was in London at the time for my world tour. I heard the song, and I fell in love with it instantly.
Sir Terry Pratchett - he was knighted in 2009, and on him it looked earned rather than entitled - wrote about dragons, wizards, turtles, witches, time-travelling monks, and suitcases with legs.
But, sir, I shall take the path of duty and shall not swerve from it.
Winston Churchill was not entirely British. His mother was American, making Sir Winston part Iroquois Indian.
Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.
Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren.
I'd love to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins, but if that doesn't happen, I'd sneak on to a film set and watch him at work. He is a compelling actor.
Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today. For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive.
It makes me feel good that I can now sit there and go, I've worked with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, all the great actors that I've worked with... Sir Ben Kingsley.
You've got to admire Sir Richard Branson. He is a completely different style of businessman to me, but you have got to admire what he has achieved.
We're all so digital, but the '50s was the era of watches you had to wind. When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest in 1953, Hillary was equipped with a Rolex Oyster Perpetual.
Have the colored people done anything to justify the prejudice against them that does exist in the hearts of so many white persons and, generally, of one great political party in this country? Have they done anything to justify it? No, sir.
I don't think there's anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent.
When you deal with a comedian who has a specific act, you can't hold 'em back. You got to work with 'em, dude. What you think, I'm just gonna do what's on the page, say 'yes sir, no sir'? I'm creatively beyond that.
The fact that I have done films down South didn't boost or hamper my chances here. In fact, I was still shooting for both my Telugu films when I met Ashu sir for 'Mohenjo Daro.' During the audition, he gave me five scenes with lengthy dialogues. Once I cleared them, he gave me a song to dance to. So, my Bollywood entry was no cakewalk.
Sir Kenneth MacMillan's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' is my favorite full-length ballet, Sergei Prokofiev's breathtaking score a favorite composition of music. As a student of martial arts, I loved drawing my sword in defense of my Capulet kin.
I don't usually get star struck, but I met Sir Paul McCartney randomly on Sunset Boulevard a few years ago, and I lost it! I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, and I didn't know how to speak. It was crazy. He was nice enough to talk to my family and me for 10 minutes, but I remember babbling away about nonsense.
Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.
