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There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

You never get the Shakespeares right. It's not possible.

Shakespeare was a dramatist of note who lived by writing things to quote.

I think nobody since has written such extraordinary work as Shakespeare writes. The characters he writes are full of inconsistencies, which is a great human quality - I mean, we're all very inconsistent in the way we behave.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'