Quotes from Alan Rickman

My idea of a real treat is Magic Mountain without standing in line.

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.

So you can't judge the character you're playing ever.

I don't think it's right that everybody knows everything about me.

From my experience, I think that every actor has to make sure that they're in charge of their own career somehow or other.

The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end.

I love perfumes. Every morning when my girlfriend and I come down to the courtyard in our block of flats we're assailed by the most delicious scent - jasmine round a doorway. It almost makes me swoon.

Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.

England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.

Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.

You know, London is so sprawling, and you can sometimes forget that anybody else is on a stage anywhere else.

I get stage fright and gremlins in my head saying: 'You're going to forget your lines'.

I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.

Unless we tell stories about ourselves, which is all that theater is, we're in deep trouble.

I do take my work seriously and the way to do that is not to take yourself too seriously.

If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

I can only see my limitations. That's just who I am.

I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.