a really good play is ambiguous - which is exactly why it endures. Every succeeding generation develops theories about it. The play's words provide very little clue. On the contrary, words are notoriously imprecise and open to every kind of interpretation, so you must search.

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

It's appalling that there have to be movements organized to give human beings the right to be human beings in the eyes of other human beings.

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.

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.

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.