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.

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

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.

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

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.

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."

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.