The good writer and the good actor are always searching for what is essential. It is a never-ending task because what is essential is always elusive and, therefore, fascinating.

If, as an actor, you allow yourself to be cocooned from the boring pin-pricks of day-to-day existence - like standing in a queue at the butcher's or any of the other dreary little events that we all have in our daily lives - you begin to lose your lifeline to what people are. And if you lose that, you eventually lose the ability to act.

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.

One knows one's done one's job as a parent properly if one's children reject everything one stands for.

it is extraordinary how much you are theirs, and how little they are yours. The child grows inside you and there is something mystical and mythical in that, but then you actually see that you are nothing more than the box in which they come. There is this total person, already formed, themselves.

[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.

For marriage the best man is the man within oneself. Most women need to develop their own 'masculine' qualities of independence, pride, courage and open sexuality.