If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future.

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

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!”

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

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

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