Every single night I'm nervous. You never know how the audience is going to react.

Life is too short to work so hard.

I'm not a film star; I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.

I've been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything.

I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.

Most of us have compromised with life. Those who fight for what they want will always thrill us.

People who are very beautiful make their own laws.

Scarlett: You should die of shame to leave me here alone and helpless. Rhett: You helpless? (laughs) Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you.

Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show.

When I come into the theatre I get a sense of security. I love an audience. I love people, and I act because I like trying to give pleasure to people.

I've always been mad about cats.

Genius is 10% talent and 90% hard work

The best vacation is still a book, a renewable ticket to places real and imaginary.

No authentic Messiah would inspire a religion that ended up calling upon the Jews to reject the manifest meaning of Sinai. It is really that simple.

The world is a very complex and interesting place and that is what I really want my fiction to say: wake up to how amazing the world is.

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already.

Everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel.

Live simply so others may simply live.

You don't think the losing is ever going to end, but when it does end, you get to enjoy it and keep working with it and keep getting it better, and that's where we are.

When it comes to actually writing, I like to write in a full room with the amps blasting, and a big drum set.