I am proud of my cake-making image but life is not that perfect. There are socks in my fruit bowl.

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.

God dances with the outcast.

So there's nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who's cool hates - and then making it cool.

Hillary Clinton follows a cardinal rule in politics - don't commit to a decision before you have to.

Our country is being run by incompetent people.

I like characters who have strong facades and then have secrets. They have cracks.

We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others - both human and animal.

I choose roles that are not me.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

I'm not saying I'm number 1, oh sorry I lied.. I'm number 1,2,3,4 and 5

To inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition, believe me. It's the one thing woman care about and there's no woman so proud that she does not rejoice at heart in her conquests.