Lindsay [Doran] goes round the table and introduces everyone -- making it clear that I am present in the capacity of writer rather than actress, therefore no one has to be too nice to me.

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.

Can he love her? Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn - to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise...

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book, ' I said. He didn't hit me.

I ask Laurie if it's possible to get trained fish. Lindsay says this is how we know I've never produced a movie.

Paparazzi arrived for Hugh [Grant]. We had to stand under a tree and smile for them.Photographer: 'Hugh, could you look less -- um --'Hugh: 'Pained?

Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.

(On period costume posture coaching:)"We all stand about like parboiled spaghetti being straightened out.

*I’m hustling* is a low self-esteem having man’s way of saying *I’m unemployed, * when answering a seemingly materialistic woman’s question as to what he does for a living.

By the by, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote neither who hadn't got some small back parlour which he would call a study!

I think you often learn from failure. Success just teaches you how great you were, but in fact it's knowing what will fail that will help you to make the right choices.

When I was a kid, I was a big science fiction fan, but current horror books were harder to get your hands on.

It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop.

We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

I never really thought about what characters I play. I always just wanted different characters.

SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY? “I too cannot be cheated,” snapped Fate.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.