With all the lines I have to learn for TV scripts, I don't think I have any problems with forgetfulness - that's brain exercise enough for me.

With your own children, you love them immediately - and with grandchildren, it's exactly the same.

You can't converse with Alzheimer's sufferers in the way you do with others; the dialogue tends to go round in circles.

I'm very good at being out of work.

My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.

Walking is my main method of relaxation. I don't go over my lines or try to solve the world's problems, I just enjoy the scenery and the wildlife.

People think I'm thick because of the characters I play. I think I'm brighter than the characters. Well, I hope I am.

I've been going to Bamburgh for holidays since I was a child.

My family have been around Northumberland for five generations.

The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory.

Though the body is itsgenesis, a poem is the vision of a processCarved in space, vision your poor eye's singlearmor against winter spring summer fall

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

The jungle is alive. It’s dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.

I'm a wanderessI'm a one night standDon't belong to no cityDon't belong to no man(Note: These lyrics were inspired by Roman Payne's quote from his novel "The Wanderess".)

Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Do not try the parallels in that way: I know that way all along. I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there.

The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.

It is not genius, nor glory, nor love that reflects the greatness of the human soul; it is kindness.

Monkeys who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to earn their livings.

Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera's eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes.