Girls in scripts are often pretty but brainless, or geeky and no one likes them, so it's great to find richer roles. Chalk and cheese aspects of people are very interesting to play.

I am a hopeless romantic.

I have endless playlists on my iPod so will throw on, say, Bruce Springsteen or The Smiths, depending on what kind of day I'm going to have.

I just really think every job I do, I get this gypsy attitude to money.

You never think you're as old as you're ever going to get.

And it's as you get older that you realize that the things that make you strange are the things that make you who you are. And that's a lovely place to get to.

I've been told I make a very good brew.

I don't know if I'm so righteous.

The thing I adore about acting is that it's not me: you get to experience all these emotions, but essentially it's not you.

There's a reason hobble skirts are called hobble skirts. You literally can't move very far in them.

My style icons would be people like Brigitte Bardot and old Hollywood actresses who always look so stunning, cool and chic. I like classic and timeless looks.

Yes, he said, taking her hand. And now I think I finally understand that old expression - a sight for sore eyes.

Dress to please yourself.... Forget you are what you wear.... Wear what you are.

A low morality will not sustain leadership long, its influence quickly vanishes, it cannot produce its own succession.

When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly ­surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

celebrate while you can

Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.

Love risks everything and asks for nothing.