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.

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.

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.

The rehearsal time is almost my favourite part of being an actress, particularly if you're working on a play that hasn't been done before.

My eyes fall on you like a singing veil from the days of rebirth.

Every man knows that slavery is a curse. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher, she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

The trick to having obedient, unquestioning children was to have death be the other option

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

I slept in the bedroom used by Sabine Baring-Goulds wife when I was researching The Moor, and later the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

It's such a huge playing field, especially with the wind and shifting tides and only three women out. It's almost like you are fending for yourself out there.

Art needs an operation