Happy Birthday Michael Caine!

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Ein Gentleman ist jemand, der Akkordeon spielen kann, es aber nicht tut.

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can't deal with a woman of their own age.

What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins.

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken, we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.

To me, growing old is great. It's the very best thing - considering the alternative.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I've had success as I've gotten older, because I'm able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better.

I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job.

I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don't want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

In the sixties, everyone you knew became famous. My flatmate was Terence Stamp. My barber was Vidal Sassoon. David Hockney did the menu in a restaurant I went to. I didn't know anyone unknown who didn't become famous.

I'm trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called 'wisdom'... I can't fathom my own heart.

I've made the transition from star to character actor and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

My wife, my daughters, even my grandchildren are funny. You've got to keep a sense of humor because anger destroys you.