I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.

The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work but in the excellence of the work he produces.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I think women are excellent social critics.

The most excellent and divine counsel the best and most profitable advertisement of all others but the least practiced is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.

Excellence then is a state concerned with choice lying in a mean relative to us this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Nothing is more noble nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'