“I don’t know what to expect for the next thing. There are always different people. It’s interesting.”

My mum used to always dress me and my sister in matching Laura Ashley dresses. And I’d be like, ‘Mum, I just wanna wear my Doc Martens!

I’m not the new anything; I’m just Agyness.

I don’t really go to fashion parties; they’re not my scene.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It’s an evolution – doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk.

I want to play positive role models – women who mean something to other women.

I wish it were different, but my body clock wakes me up between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. I was even talking yesterday about how, if I want to get enough sleep, I have to be in bed at 10. That means I’m totally a grandma.

I think modelling was like the university of life, really. You get to travel but you get thrown into this adult world, which is kind of quite scary.

When you’re young, you say it how it is, and even your views are, like, ‘This is totally the truth’, ‘cos you don’t know any difference, so there’s a real confidence in your way of thinking.

I’d like a relationship that was like two tree trunks side by side, strong but independent.

I think that you can’t fake doing the job. All I want to do is deliver. That’s my focus.

For modelling, you have to be such a strong person in a way – or seen to be a strong person, do you know what I mean? But in acting you have to get in touch with all the vulnerability that you carry.

You know, even though I’m in fashion, I don’t, like, do fashion. Fashion isn’t me, even though I work in it. It’s just materialistic stuff.

You can never become that thing, because it’s such a projection.

I’ve never had formal drama-school training; I’ve just picked things up as I’ve gone along.

And what I love is that it’s such a creative process, with a bunch of people, and I wanted that more, which is how the acting thing came about.

If you have a connection to someone, it doesn’t matter what their exterior is.

I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

I found out I got ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ and my BAFTA nomination in quick succession, and I just didn’t expect it to be like that. I thought there would be a lot more time in between. It’s been an overwhelming experience.

To whom much is given, much is expected. I do believe this. It’s embedded in me.

The flat shoe makes the woman equal of men. When they have high [shoes], they play a part like a geisha, and they can’t be expected to be taken that seriously.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

What man thinks of changing himself so as to suit his wife? And yet men expect that women shall put on altogether new characters when they are married, and girls think that they can do so.

An astronomer must be cosmopolitan, because ignorant statesmen cannot be expected to value their services

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only be deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.