Spreadable butter is wonderful for cake-making: it's much easier to cream than the block type and slightly lighter because it's blended with oil.

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.

Without gospel, how could know the great grace of salvation?

The world needs people who are more comfortable standing still. We keep the earth on it axis when everybody else is bouncing around.

The last time I took drugs, I probably took more than anybody could survive.

God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.

A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges.

Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same.

Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it

After a lifetime of engaging in long, passionate discussions I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time trying to convince anyone of anything.

Any solution to a problem changes the problem.

If there is a conflict in your mind between what you know and what you are seeing, paint what you see because if you don't, the result will look like something that isn't there.