Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen.

Fame often comes to those who are thinking about something else, whereas celebrity comes to those who think about nothing else. Celebrity is, if you like, a forgery of fame: it has the form but lacks the content.

Later, in a different home, I befriended a eucalypt, using a resilient bough as a trampoline. Learning nothing from having plummeted from the peppercorn, I’d bounce happily in my haven in the heavens. I loved that tree – and fully understand why Heysen, Roberts, McCubbin and the rest devoted so much time and effort to painting arboreal portraits.

Human beings interest me greatly and I want them to have a better time. And the way I can do that is to have a better time myself…to entertain, and to change the world just a little bit.

I don't know how the notion of celebrity got chucked onto people like me…I'm an actor, that's it. There's no cause for celebration, there is no celebrity anywhere near me.

I still feel childlike. Not childish – there’s a difference. But to be childlike is to be savoured and treasured. I offer my books to those who like the things of childhood; the challenges, intrigue, joy and fun.

Words matter, and the right words matter most of all. In the end they’re all that remain of us.

If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

And we were free! Lord God! to think that men can be such fools as ever to do anything of their own free will and guiding that puts their liberty in danger when there’s such a world outside of a gaol wall – such a heaven on earth as long as a man’s young and strong, and has all the feelings of a free man, in a country like this.

But it’s a strange thing that I don’t think there’s any place in the world where men feel a more real out-and-out respect for a gentleman than in Australia.