There's no good way to waste your time. Wasting time is just wasting time.

Being powerful is so much more interesting than being beautiful.

I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology.

I learned quite early on in life that we are all two people. And one of those people none of us will ever know.

A war film can be propaganda and they're very valuable as propaganda, as we realized in Britain in the Second World War. Film as propaganda is a very valuable tool. It can also demonize, which is the dangerous side of a war film as propaganda. But there are war films that are not propaganda. It's just saying 'This is what it's like.' For 99 percent of us we don't know what it's like. We have no idea. So to reveal that to the audience is powerful.

The great marriages are partnerships. It can't be a great marriage without being a partnership.

You know, he [Alan Rickman] played these very reserved, sometimes-cold, sometimes-threatening characters on the screen, but the reality of the man was incredible warmth and humor and generosity and wicked fun.