The rehearsal time is almost my favourite part of being an actress, particularly if you're working on a play that hasn't been done before.

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable.

I swim more or less every day.

I try to be classic without being mumsy.

I've never particularly liked the idea of looking back; I'd rather look forward

I look at myself objectively and in a way I see myself as a commodity. Your name becomes somehow outside yourself. Now, when I'm at home being Mrs. Scarfe, that's when I'm most myself.

I know some actresses who used to be older than me who are now younger than me - I don't know how they do it.

I think one wants lots of different lives.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world.

That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.

Music can touch and heal that secret wound of the soul which nothing else can reach.

Never regret. If it's good it's wonderful. If it's bad it's experience.

She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbor: "Winter is dead.

One of the special marks of the Holy Ghost in the Apostolic Church was the spirit of boldness.

On the aesthetic level, decolonized music presents itself as a direct antagonist to the traditional values promoted by the culture industry.

Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.

Value inner attunement as much as you value outer attainment.

Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.

What would happen if even one generation were raised with respect and without violence?