I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do; and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.

It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way.

In England, nobody's your friend.

Now you can leave home at any time you like.Your mother comes down and finds a picture of the Eiffel Tower on her plate. And she says, 'Oh! Rosemary's gone to Paris. No wonder the bathroom was so tidy.' And nobody minds. But in my day, to go abroad with all those wicked Frenchmen, what would become of them? So no-one ever went anywhere.

When asked, 'Shall I tell my mother I'm gay?', I reply, 'Never tell your mother anything.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.

Central Europe is full of little countries standing shoulder to shoulder with no window to the sea. They are like the passengers in a rush-hour train which has stopped between stations for three centuries. And they all hate one another. And they're all crushed together waving their national flags, clanking their national chains, jabbering their national language.