My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

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 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.

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

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.

You never know people, do you? You can work with 'em for twenty years; you don't know 'em at all.

Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.