I'm an actor. It's like being a bricklayer. Sometimes I'm building a little wall, and the next time I'm building a palace.
I have a little pocket Bible that I have with me all the time in my briefcase, and so usually in the mornings, sometimes on the campaign bus or plane, I always try to catch some time to do that regularly.
Sometimes you get caught up in what's going on around you. The reality is that you are just a regular person. At some point, the career will be over, the bright lights turn off. That can come back to haunt you if you're not just a regular guy.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.
I've always been slightly self-conscious as an actor, and I guess that sometimes reads as pomposity. Starting when I was 30, I somehow gave off an impression at an audition that had them mentally put me in a three-piece suit or put an attache case in my hand. If there was a stiff-guy part, the director would brighten up when I came in.
I try not to wear foundation unless I have a giant pimple, which sometimes I do. For the red carpet, I may add a brighter colored lip and darker eyes. But my standard is blush and mascara.
I shouldn't be saying this - high treason, really - but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.
I live in a beautiful part of British Columbia, and I run through the rainforest. I do have to look over my shoulder to check for a cougar or a wolf though, so sometimes it's not the most relaxing.
The British press are a group of unremitting scumbags. And sometimes they use that scumbaggery to good ends, and often not.
Sometimes the British press is maybe a little bit racist.
I sometimes wonder, with the Oxbridge comics, the broadcasters seem to say, at some point, now I trust you to do a documentary, you can be the voice for a maths show, or whatever. I don't think we're ever considered in that way.
Luckily, my children love broccoli, and although we sometimes enter into UN-like negotiations about how many 'trees' they need to eat before they can partake of ice cream, it is a vegetable that they tend to embrace.
I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.
I really like to look like a history book. I can look 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I'll pull that '80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.
The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.
Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day - it all just hurts.
Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.
Sometimes overturning brutal regimes takes time and costs lives. I wish it weren't so. I really, really do.
I have gotten into a lot of trouble in my life for being brutally honest. Sometimes I put both my feet in my mouth. But like Elton John, I'm still standing.
Sometimes sushi is just superb, and other times there's nothing like a great big steak. It depends where your taste buds are at the time.
