Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”

I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever.

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

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.

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.

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