Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.

I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.

Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.

English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

Laywers, I suppose, were children once.

All my life I have felt events to be the result of my own sins.

It’s simple my heart is made from love and love will always beat hate any day and anywhere! No amount of evil can ever conquer me.

Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.

More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked '"What's the matter? Did you fall over?" So I said "No. I've a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it."

Without the perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

I thought I was going to be a poet when I was in college, but then I found out I was poor so I decided to do something I'd get paid for.

Remember we are all but travelers here.

If you had the opportunity and some talent, there was no way you couldn't progress, because it was an open market. There was the advertising world, and there was the documentary world.

For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it.

When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished.