I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.
I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.
If you look at some shows that have an ugly feel to them, or a nihilistic sort of feel to them, you'll usually find a group of cynical, unhappy, miserable people behind the production. If you see a show that's rather boring, or a cookie-cutter factory show, you'll usually find some pretty uninteresting, boring people behind it.
A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
Amongst my friends, I am known as the most cynical person they know - I'm incredibly cynical. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in the supernatural, I don't believe in anything! And I'm terribly cynical, and somehow or other, all three of my films and much of my television work has been rather sentimental, and 'heartwarming'.
I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.
Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.
If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.
Avoid cynical and negative people like the plague. They are killers of potential.
I may have grown cynical from long service, but this is a tendency I do not like, and I sometimes think I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years and listen to it.