I don't feel 'vibes' when I enter a building - don't feel the previous owners looking down on me. But I do know when a place feels friendly.

We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood.

Shyness is just egotism out of its depth.

I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.

I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time.

We always had chocolates and my mother was careful to make sure they were unwrapped in advance so the paper wouldn't rustle in the middle of a performance.

Older people, who just happen to have been around longer, may not be cleverer than the young, but they have seen more.

Everyone wants instant everything, and they want instant success, but I always think you should treat things in the arts like a garden, and let them grow.

So often actors only mix with actors, which is quite incestuous, and doesn't give them the insight into how other people work.

With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.

I'm a bit of a Scotophile. I have a house on the Black Isle, so I'm in Scotland quite a lot and think Edinburgh is just the most beautiful city.

I have gout asthma and seven other maladies but am otherwise very well.

Courtesy wins woman all as well. As valor may, but he that closes both is perfect.

I've got the best lead man, I really love my lead man.

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version

It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible.

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

Making mistakes is the privilege of the active. It is always the mediocre people who are negative, who spend their time proving that they were not wrong.

Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.

I'm the most carefree, happy person you'll meet.