Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004)
Born Peter Alexander von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning English-German actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur.
Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus.
The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
He would always see the bright side of something, even something that would be very annoying to him or to all of us around him. He would get over it and he would always find that there was something positive to be gained from it. He was a giver, throughout everything, and a wonderful warm person.
Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.
I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry land.
I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.
Lieutenant Seymour: Wyatt, we do not deal with justice here, but with the law.
Lieutenant Wyatt: Was not the one conceived to serve the other?
He had a great sense of the good in people. He enjoyed the peculiarities that were part of humanity. ... Filming can be desperately boring and he was always telling fantastic stories and being tremendously entertaining.
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
Irrespective of nationality, soldiers are always open to the same discomfort and to the same comradeship the world over. I'll make things easy for you if you make things easy for me. That is, after all the unwritten law of the barracks.
Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.
Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
It was as if all the world's wit were rolled into one portly fellow. ... He spoke six languages, and a few others of his own comic invention. With gifts too wide-ranging to be contained in one art form, he wrote hit plays (Romanoff and Juliet) and books of nonfiction and short stories. ... His spirit was essentially impish (as on a comedy album for which he provided all the voices and sound effects); his greatest role was Peter Ustinov, inexhaustible raconteur. The title of his 1977 autobiography summed up the world's opinion of this engaging, capacious talent: Dear Me.
I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your — politeness.
Jack of all trades, master of none — but what a jack! … In the end he was a disappointed man … He wanted to be a great playwright or a great author. He never quite made that.
Sir Peter had a magical way with children and an inimitable way of making their problems matter to people all over the world. He was one of UNICEF’s most effective and beloved partners, a man who exemplified the idea that one person can make a world of difference. … There are few parts of the globe where Sir Peter did not travel to meet with and advocate for children, and few communities that were not made better by his attention.
It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears.
The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.