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.

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.

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

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

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.