I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

Most things don't work out as expected, but what happens instead often turns out to be the good stuff.

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself - that is the best combination.

My husband was actually very keen that I would become a Bond girl.

I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again.

We get up in the morning. We do our best. Nothing else matters.

The only real failure is the failure to try.

The more I do, the more frightened I get. But that is essential. Otherwise why would I go on doing it?

There's nothing good about being my age.

I get sillier as I get older, so I don't know what wisdom means. I can only pass on something that I've been acquainted with and let whomever it is pick the bones out of it

Someone once said: "We do not make friends, we recognize them." And you'll know who they are because they play according to the same rules that you do.

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....

Familiarity makes the lion more dangerous.

My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.

I'm beautiful in my way 'cause God makes no mistakes. I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

Gaze steadfastly at things which, though far away, are yet present to the mind.

The sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All-good, Almighty, and Omniscient. These are obvious qualities, and need no argument to prove, from the very fact of totality.

I think fantasy literature is the one true literature of hope and imagination.

Some of your greatest blessings come with patience.