I don't agree with the whole 'my mother's my friend' approach, because you're their mum and there has to be a difference between the generations.

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable.

I swim more or less every day.

I try to be classic without being mumsy.

I've never particularly liked the idea of looking back; I'd rather look forward

I look at myself objectively and in a way I see myself as a commodity. Your name becomes somehow outside yourself. Now, when I'm at home being Mrs. Scarfe, that's when I'm most myself.

I know some actresses who used to be older than me who are now younger than me - I don't know how they do it.

I think one wants lots of different lives.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world.

We have a fundamental imperative in our lives to matter to others, to serve others, and to support each other in mattering more.

Have you ever been further away than yourself? Where?

You are beaten to earth? Well well what's that? Come up with a smiling face it's nothing against you to fall down flat but to lie there - that's disgrace.

Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

I believe in my heart that I am ready to work to restore America to its rightful place in the world.

When the mind, body, and spirit work together, I believe anything is possible.

Our downfall as a species is that we are arrogant enough to think that we can control Mother Nature and stupid enough to think it is our job.

The triumphal-procession-air which, in our manners and customs, is given to marriage at the outset - that singing of Te Deum before the battle has begun.

That was the trouble with moving houses; no matter how carefully you packed the books, they never ended up on the new shelves in quite the right place.