I was always very determined, as was my husband, that we wouldn't let any of our children act when they were young.

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.

Every dream has a message. Pay attention!

Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

It’s being reported that the economy lost 95,000 jobs in September. And that’s just people leaving the White House.

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.

Anytime you get men in glitter, it's a flamboyant occasion!

I will never be a career actor, I don't think. I don't feel that I have the skill set to jump into it that way, although I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indissolubly held.

If the child has not an object that it can occupy itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with itself.