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

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

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.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

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."

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.

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.