When you play someone who is an iconic figure you can't go into it lightly.

It's true, I've become one of those grumpy older women.

Acting attracts shy people and show-offs.

I have spent my whole life educating myself.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

I don't tell everyone my life history because if everyone knows your inside-leg measurement, how can you surprise them?

You need to keep on doing things you have never done before in your career. You have to have a go.

You don't go to a comedy and try to laugh. You laugh in spite of yourself. You don't just come on stage and cry. Something has pushed you to cry.

I've learnt to listen. I don't think I always did listen.

I've had very close relationships with some twentieth-century writers.

I've never lost a grown-up child, but I have known loss.

Why are you pretending to write, when I already know you're just doing that to intimidate me?

Being grounded is not a punishment. Stay rooted.

The house fills with the particular atmosphere that accompanies peacefully sleeping children: a rich narcotic silence that creeps down the stairs and twines itself around the table legs.

Love doesn't need a reply... ignorance and is it a romantic image?

Women have so much power that even hearing the word power frightens them.

To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.

People like Congress more than their health insurance companies.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

Sometimes I get really lonely. Especially when I'm throwing a Frisbee.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.