People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you.

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.

I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty.

That's just the way it is. I'll always remember. She's forgotten.

Life is magic. Life is a miracle. Life is an awful beautiful ride.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.

You got to be ready for everything in life

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

We must nurture tolerance, collective wisdom, and democracy.

I'd like to keep singing - whether that's small or big. To stop singing for a living would break my heart.