I think one wants lots of different lives.

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 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.

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.

People who pressure you usually deserve a “no". People who are patient with you usually deserve a “yes".

Tune as the sitthar, neither high nor low, and we will dance away the hearts of men.

I had a lot of anger inside me and that came out at times that were not particularly advantageous to me career-wise.

Caring for children is a dance between setting appropriate limits as caretakers and avoiding unnecessary power struggles that result in unhappiness.

I have never made a decision based on race and never will.

And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.

Even paranoid people have enemies.

I broke every barrier I could to see things as they are.

hope is like a piece of string when you’re drowning; it just isn’t enough to get you out by itself.

The issue of carbon is one area where we really need to work together and if people don't have the technology they need, that technology needs to be made available and affordable.