Samuel West Quotations

When people say, 'If I had my life over again I wouldn't do anything different,' well, I'd do everything differently just for the variety.

What I do believe is theatre is a medium with a peculiar ability to air vital issues.

What did my parents say when I told them I wanted to be an actor? 'Be a plumber.'

Stamps from Afghanistan are hilarious. You can tell when the revolutions are because suddenly they stop having pictures of the mullahs and the independence monument and they start having fish on them.

If you play a part that's been done before, on stage for instance, you feel like you're carrying a torch and staggering under the weight of it for a bit and then passing it on to somebody else.

I mean I think children love the idea that there are different viewpoints and different words for things and different worlds. And the more that they pretend to be other people, the harder it is for them to hate them and misunderstand them when they grow up.

Where licentiousness begins, liberty ends.

Most actors are socialists, aren't they?

It would've been hard to do something else, to as it were, run away from the circus and become an accountant.

I did start reading quite young but I was always read to by my parents, who are both actors. Bedtime stories from when I was about two/three to when I was about 15. In fact they didn't stop until I eventually kind of kicked them out of my bedroom.