Timothy Spall Quotes

I didn't know whether to join the army or go to art college.

I adored my birth father and constantly worried that I was being disloyal to him and his schoolteacher roots if I spent too much time performing and enjoying it.

I didn't think I was an actor and fought it for a long time. Nobody paid for that but me.

Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.

I was really conflicted. I had always planned to help the world. Instead, I was going to become an actress? That seemed like such a selfish thing to do.

By the time I was ready for college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.

It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters.

Diverting the internal traffic between the Writer as Angel of Light and the Writer as Hustler is that scribbling child in a grown-up body wondering if anybody is listening.

The decision-making process was very difficult: is this how I want my career to start, with playing Jodie Dallas on this show?

After I started Slipknot, I was very honored because I got in touch with the masses. But I was very down on myself because I dropped out of college, which meant I dropped out on myself.

Before Hollywood happened to me, I just took a break to think about whether I belong in the industry or whether I should be listening to whatever people were telling me.

I think everyone goes through it in university, figuring out whether or not they're doing the right course. I guess I'm the same, but in music.

I was having a dilemma whether I wanted to return to acting at all because I was coming from this sort of agency-less childhood career, and I'd never made the choice to go into acting.

I have a really weird relationship with myself where I'll say, "Do it, do it!" and then, "I don't want to do it anymore, I hate photo shoots, I'm so tired of this!" Or, "I wrote a song, and you're gonna sing it!" then, "I can't hit the note." I want to be a behind-the-scenes producer. I really hate being in front of people. But I'm also obsessed with becoming a pop star.

When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

I'm so tired. I don't know if I can ever outrun how I used to be.

Am I a boy or a lady, I don't know which?

Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?

Can a man of perception respect himself at all?

Once again, I've been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I'm currently stuck with.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

We shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? Do we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?