Coming eyeball to eyeball with a hummingbird on my terrace is as exciting to me as any celebrity Ive met as a result of Downton Abbey.

People have preconceptions about women of a certain age.

I can do basics, but I'm not a proper cook. I can do a roast. I can stick a chicken in the oven with vegetables.

The first meal my husband ever made me was a chicken curry. I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life.

I get invited to a lot more glamorous parties since Ive been in Downton Abbey, which has made me much more fashion conscious.

I did an O-level in domestic science when I was at school, but on the day of the practical exam, it was a cookery nightmare.

Ive been to the White House and had Hilary Clinton push through the crowd to come and meet me. Chelsea Clinton, too.

I believe anything can happen.

I always admire people who have passion.

As an actor, you never know where the works going to come, so you have to be flexible about it.

Ive not cooked Christmas dinner since 1982.

Everything about a person may not be perfect, but there are somethings in every person that deserve our respect.

Were the stars against him? A woman's fingers are quicker in the sky and shine more brightly.

Wild men, screaming through the keyholes.

We are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.

What he (Sammy Sosa) and I have been doing is fantastic. What we've done nobody in the game has done for thirty-seven years. I'm pretty happy with the way things have been going.

I don't want anything. I exist only to serve others.

With the opening of the New Year, all the closed portals of limitations will be thrown open and I shall move through them to vaster fields, where my worthwhile dreams of life will be fulfilled.