Mark Rylance

“I love poetry. If my mind gets a bit tight or bound up with information or depressed with bad news, I find a good book of poetry is like going to the gym for an hour. My mind just expands.”

“Chaos can be incredibly creative.”

“I've always looked at famous actors and hope that once they get a part that they have success in, they would reprise it every few years in the way a pop singer will reprise their hits. Like Bob Dylan singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' until he's fed up with it, finding different ways of doing it.”

“I think that was very important to Bacon... personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it was Francis Bacon, because it is very difficult to prove.”

“Nature is very cruel. It is much riskier to love any living being than not. I'm painfully aware that even my little dog is a walking bundle of mortality. I'm painfully aware he's going to pass.”