“You are who you are when nobody's watching.”

“Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?”

“Nobody seems to understand that in such matters the tact and sympathy should come from the one who is about to die, not the poor bugger who has to take the news.”

“You've just had the most imponderable joy of watching charlieissocoollike, which makes you, like, cool.”

“I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief."And you so intelligent!""Excuse me?" said tom"Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it.""How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option”

“First love is unrequited ultimately because it’s so huge.It’s such an act of giving and it requires so much back that it can never be given back. It’s like an atom bomb. It’s like… It’s all the energy of who you are and who you want to be and what you love and what you hope to be explodes. It is impossible for a single... human being to offer that back to you in a mutual way.”

“Life, that can shower you with so much slendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.”