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

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.

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.

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.

The prisoners of the cultures are mostly the women! House is the name of the prison!

One always has to be willing to lose to be able to win... in battle and in life. I wonder. Are you willing to lose, Rayla?

[A]s if enjoying a last, drawn-out supper, he sips on Alexandria's shadows.

The Prussian monarchy is not a country which has an army, but an army which has a country in which – as it were – it is just stationed.

Some things go too deep for words.

I want to remain that family farmer independence, which I think is so critical to this country. I think it's helped build this country.

That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.

I live to laugh, and I laugh to live.

Never, ever, take a "no" from someone who's not empowered to give you a "yes" in the first place.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.