British Quotes

It definitely puts a strain on family life - I miss them like mad. Being a working mother I've been juggling house and career from day one. I want to hold out for telly for the second half of the year.

I've been on the road for four years. I won't recognise the place again, until I walk out on stage.

I'm quite grateful to the BBC. They helped me back onto the touring circuit.

I'm hopefully touring with Colin Baker next year in Perfect Strangers. I have performed with Sylvia Simms in poetry and music evenings. I would love to do those for the rest of my career - they are so fun and witty.

I would love to go back as Leela in this new series.

I think it's one of my favourite theatres ever, so quirky and wonderful and steeped in history. The space is wonderful and the acoustics are brilliant.

I think I was first choice for the part. I don't know - that's what they always tell you anyway. I didn't have to do any audition for the part. Sam saw me in Dinner and the whole thing slipped into place.

I only have three scenes and each is a turn and she gets progressively drunker. It's all terribly funny and its main challenge is that it's so far away from what I usually do.

I never watch TV. I'm a Radio Four addict. I love listening to music too.

I found that a bit unfair. However, I did feel quite liberated when I left. I'm very grateful to the show - it revived a flagging career, but I'm glad to be away from it now.

I cannot understate the ability to handle classical texts such as Shakespeare.

He was incredibly good as Dr Who. He brought all his eccentricities to the role and was so charismatic and charming. He must be the fans firm favourite.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.

What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the safe and just side of a question is the generous and merciful side.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.

In morals what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

There's a really classic cliche every time you switch the TV on - you see cops arguing. I have spent a day a week for many years in the presence of police and I have never seen them argue. It's a military hierarchy. They do what they're told. There's no bickering.

There are people who can achieve huge success in life, while adding a bit of fun and a splash of colour to this increasingly grey world.

The police feel that most of the public are against them and that there is a lot of bad feeling.

My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it.

Music is an important part of my writing process.

I travel abroad constantly on book promotion and research, and the Internet is invaluable to me for accessing U.K. news in places such as America, which most of the time hasn't heard of England.

I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid.

I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.