Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.
Theres a difference between solitude and loneliness
I'm so moved to hear Celia Johnson again, so lovely.
Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.
There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.
It was - it's always very nice to be somebody rather grand.
I'm hopeless - all I know is that time is going past so fast.
It's funny to be pigeonholed so late in life but there we are.
When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.
There were male colleges, and there were very few female colleges.
I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much.
Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.
People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.
Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.
Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.
One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.
I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.
I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.
I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.
If someone is going to talk about the process of making a film, it should be the director.
Where you get people who want to take a picture of you or take a picture of them with you.
I'd done "Gosford Park," a film that Julian Fellowes had written that Robert Altman directed.
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.
My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.
I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.
I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.
I think lots of actors are very nervous and shy. I know lots of them who are, and some who aren't of course.
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.
The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.
The last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back.
I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.
An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.
I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.
There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.
It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.
I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.
Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.
The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed.
It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see…I can only hope that’s correct, because there’s an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.
It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see. I can only hope that's correct, because there's an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.
Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people.
There was nobody in the family who had ever done anything like that before. My brothers - I had two brothers. They were twins. They both became architects. They were both six years older.
There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk.
I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't.
People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you.