I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

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

No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

I can be as contrary as I choose.

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.