The Treorchy Male Choir - the very name is a song! May I thank the Choir, past and present, for all the glorious music-making they have shared with us.

I can't actually see myself putting make-up on my face at the age of sixty, but I can see myself going on a camel train to Samarkand.

To counter-balance the natural humility of motherhood, I garden ... In the garden, more than any place, I really feel successful.

I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better.

I'm less confident now than I've ever been. In this peculiar craft, confidence is something you spend a lifetime losing. I used to be frightened only one night a week but now I'm frightened of every performance. I mean really frightened.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing. ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.