“I would have been a terrible mother because I’m basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.”

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

I like to move fast, and wearing high heels was tough, and low heels with a skirt is unattractive. So pants took over.

If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.

Only when a woman decides not to have children, can a woman live like a man. That’s what I’ve done.

Enemies are so stimulating.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Our Constitution was not intended to be used by … any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.

The only time I am ever miserable is when I do something just for the money.

I wear my sort of clothes to save me the trouble of deciding which clothes to wear.

Love fattens on smooth words.

You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.

A boy sows a wild oat or two, the world winks. A girl does the same — scandal.

I was brought up by two extremely intelligent people who gave me the greatest gift that man can give anyone, and that is freedom from fear.

I’ve always thought men and women are not too well suited to each other. It’s inevitable that they should come together, but, again, how well suited are they to live together in the same house?

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book.

Authenticity is about being true to who you are, even when everyone around you wants you to be someone else

Don’t think for a moment that I’m really like any of the characters I’ve played. I’m not. That’s why it’s called ‘acting’.

I have not need to promise what I cannot do.

Grief does not change you, It reveals you.

I think you’re bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It’s not something you often do in comedy.

It’s not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.