It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.

Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.

I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

He decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further.

Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work.

Surely going to bed with a man before marriage was the most courageous act of my life.

I truly believe that [America loves] the people that don't play to the audience and are just themselves.

I wake up early. At 6:30 A.M., I'm at my most optimistic.

Hungry bellies have no ears. [Fr., La ventre affame n'point d'oreilles.]

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

If 50 percent of your career is not filled with failure, you're not really successful.

Sometimes, in order to go forward, You must first go back.

When the president of Iran Ahmadinejad says that our debt makes America not a great country, that's a frightening thing.