People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.
We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.
Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.
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.
Theres a difference between solitude and loneliness
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.
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
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.
Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.
When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.
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 don't think films about elderly people have been made very much. I think of Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy. But they always seem to be fairly successful, so it's a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five-years-old.
The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places?
It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.
I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.
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.
I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don't know what the future holds, if anything.
I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it's because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I'm reliving my own mother's experience of raising me.
Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.
I had a very good English teacher who said to me that she thought I ought to do it. She - I don't know, she saw something thank goodness because I think if it hadn't been encouraged by somebody that serious, I'm not sure what would've happened to me.
I am just surprised to be doing anything at my age actually. When you think of where I am now and where I've come from, I am very pleased and very grateful to be standing up and delivering Julian's great lines.
I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.
