Christmas commonplaces

✻ When a director told me, ‘A drunk is a man trying to walk straight and speak properly. You’re an actor trying to walk crooked and slur your speech.’

Michael Caine’s defining moment

✻ He had learned by the age of 20 a lesson it took me half a lifetime to learn: namely that there was nothing that could not be said and no one to whom one could not say it.

Alan Bennett on Russell Harty (1934-88)

✻ Don’t just do something. Sit there.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (b 1926)

✻ The ventriloquist’s big problem: six