Did I Ever Tell You This?: A Memoir

by Sam Neill

I was formed, grew into a man, to a Beatles soundtrack.

She had this terrible capacity, an urge that I sometimes detect in myself and quickly suppress: if someone crossed her over the smallest thing, she never spoke to them again.

If there is one thing I dread, it is senility and dementia. Any sign of it, please, take me out the back and shoot me.

Instead I raided the library, and I found myself lost in the world of fiction. Books took me away from the pain of being at boarding school: Arthur Ransome, C. S. Lewis, Robert Louis Stevenson.

Boarding was a twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week commitment to hell.

I love sleeper trains. I feel like an infant being rocked to sleep as we go.

People usually get over themselves in time.

it. It’s a conundrum that a lot of people come across at some point. Where does the line lie between solitude and loneliness? And does there come a point in your single life where you are not only reluctant to live with someone again, but you strongly suspect that no one in their right mind could put up with you?

Stewart is an archetypal Campion Ugly Man. Patriarchal, uncommonly stupid and incapable of comprehending women or indeed the world he lives in.

‘Why don’t you stick to acting. You are just an actor.’ Christ on a bike, really. Try telling that to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I love America. Who doesn’t? The whole world is secretly in love with America, whether they admit it or not.

What do you want from Russia when you watch a Russian film? Just a little hope that that butcher Putin doesn’t send missiles your way.

Here is what has shocked me about losing my taste—I’ve learnt that the appetite for food is pretty much the same thing as the appetite for life. When I have an appetite, I can’t wait to get up and have breakfast and get into life. When I don’t want to eat, I can hardly be bothered to get out of bed. I almost feel I’ve lost my will to live.