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.

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

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.

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."

A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience's sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.

The business of life is learning that you can't lay down the terms.

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.