When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment - and nor should they have done - about having a good time.

If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left.

It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It's that face.

Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.

I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference,’ she siad. ‘You know, actually change something.’ ‘What, like “change the world”, you mean?’ ‘Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.

I had always been led to believe that ageing was a slow and gradual process, the creep of a glacier. Now I realise that it happens in a rush, like snow falling off a roof.