I wish people would take more care of the countryside.

With your own children, you love them immediately - and with grandchildren, it's exactly the same.

You can't converse with Alzheimer's sufferers in the way you do with others; the dialogue tends to go round in circles.

I'm very good at being out of work.

With all the lines I have to learn for TV scripts, I don't think I have any problems with forgetfulness - that's brain exercise enough for me.

My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.

Walking is my main method of relaxation. I don't go over my lines or try to solve the world's problems, I just enjoy the scenery and the wildlife.

People think I'm thick because of the characters I play. I think I'm brighter than the characters. Well, I hope I am.

I've been going to Bamburgh for holidays since I was a child.

My family have been around Northumberland for five generations.

There's no retirement for an artist, its your way of living so theres no end to it.

I feel like my maybe someday just became my right now.

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness thinking of others first . . . when you learn to live for others they will live for you.

Only the completely enlightened are beyond winning and losing. Yet, strangely enough, they had to win to get to the point of being beyond winning and losing.

There are so few people that wake up every day and go do something that they dont dread... Im very lucky.

If you want to look young and thin, hang around old fat people.

How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

You carve out the organization's character through your daily choices. You shape its conscience as you exercise your own.

I'll take my clothes off - whatever the job requires.