Julian Fellowes Quotes

Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.

Lawyers are always confident before the verdict. It's only after that they share their doubts.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

The movies are funny, in one way, because you think of everyone being as beautiful as the dawn, but that isn't true.

If you're in the movie or in television, your failures are very public, and so are your successes. You weigh them up against each other, really.

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don't we?

If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.

War makes early risers of us all.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

You are my whole existence and I will love you until my last breath.

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.

I think Americans are wonderful film actors - the best in the world - but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

We live a life that is often spent in crowds - parties, festivals and first nights - so it's nice to avoid them.

What's difficult for American audiences is that they're used to a system here where you can get an actor for five years or even seven, and that is signed for at the audition. Whereas in England, no agent will give you an actor for more than three years.

There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.

I just don't believe in generalisations.

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: "A funny little man asked me to marry him."

I always loved movies and the cinema; we always used to go to see films as a family.

If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future.

I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever.

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.

Sometimes you watch one of your favorite shows from 20 years ago and you think, 'I'm loving this, but golly, it's going at the speed of a snail.'

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

What does she do?" "She's a producer." Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn't mean much more than "she's a member of the human race.

Success means your thoughts are worthy of everyones consideration.

Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.

Plenty of friendships are sustainable through dinners and lunches, but will not stand a week away. So be careful with whom you go on holiday.

I can be as contrary as I choose.

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.

What is a week-end? Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

Maggie Smith has a unique sense of comedy, based on a somewhat ironic view of real life, making it both funnier and more sad. But perhaps her greatest ability, or at least the one that most intrigues me, is how she can convey deep and powerful emotion without a trace of sentimentality.

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.

One of the great injustices in fiction is that on the whole people with romantic yearnings have romantic faces. But in real life it's not always like that.

When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it's hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.

I always like to arrive at the airport early to enjoy breakfast and lounge about so that when I get on the plane all my travel fever has disappeared.

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost.

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.