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.

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.

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 have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.

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

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.

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don't we?