My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano ' too I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film even if it's contemporary creates its own world.

I would vote for the man who's lived life who's done different occupations who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living struggled to raise a family struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience honest experience.

You can learn more from the lows than the highs. The highs are great but the lows make you really look at things in a different way and want to improve. Every player will have both in their careers and I have but what you get is that experience which is so important to perform at your best.

Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

I've learned through experience of playing different characters some of whom were jerks that when you play a character who is pretentious or obnoxious in any way it's important to knock them down a peg.

I definitely feel more complete than before. There's a void you have when you don't feel you've found the other part of who you are so I'm in a different place now and that's nice to experience.

Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and if I'm upset I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.