From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.

There's a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I'll not be parting with that, nor our bed - the four-poster - I'll be needing that to die in.

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.

In the last stages of a final illness, we need only the absence of pain and the presence of family.

Victoria had the discipline of being a queen to help her through the biggest trial of her life - when she lost Albert and faltered. I've had the discipline of the theatre to help me over the ups and downs. A wonderful life . . Go it old girl. You've done it well.

All my dogs have been scamps and thieves and troublemakers and I've adored them all.