Peter Ustinov (1921 – 2004)
Born Peter Alexander von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning English-German actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur.
Billy Budd: You didn't even hate him. I think that sometimes you hate yourself. I was thinking, sir, the nights are lonely. Perhaps I could talk with you between watches when you've nothing else to do.
Claggert: Lonely. What do you know of loneliness?
Billy Budd: Them's alone that want to be.
Claggert: Nights are long. Conversation helps pass the time.
Billy Budd: Can I talk to you again, then? It would mean a lot to me.
Claggert: Perhaps to me, too. [His expression suddenly sours] Oh, no. You would charm me too, huh? Get away.
To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Sunshine Sally and Peter Ustinov don't like the scene anyhow.
I dropped acid on a Saturday night just to see what the fuss was about.
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
I quite like talking myself, but when Peter was in the room there wasn't much point, you just had to listen.
He was unimaginably, overwhelmingly gifted. You had to imagine a cross between Dr Johnson, Isaiah Berlin, Peter Sellers and don't forget Charlie Chaplin — because Peter was a great mime too. ... He was inexhaustible. It was like talking to Europe, talking to history.
Basically I'm a very serious person, but I think the form it takes with me is comedy. I see the amusing side of all potentially pompous situations.
Sex is a conversation carried out by other means.
I am just a man, not fit to do the work of God... or the Devil.
To be gentle, tolerant, wise and reasonable requires a goodly portion of toughness.
I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic.
Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.
Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.
The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
It's hot. And there's a lot of it. I like everything about it except the flavor.
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
Good-bye to you too ol' Rights of Man!
Then he lifted his body up
To throw himself to a watery grave
"Peter," I yelled
"What about Billy Budd
The innocent no one could save?"