It's the gloomy things that need our help, if everything in the garden is sunny, why meddle?

Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

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

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.

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.

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.

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