British Quotes

I was a chronically shy child. That kernel of my younger self is still there, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with it.

I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways.

I resent all organised religions.

I have a worm's eye view and a bird's eye view simultaneously and it's immensely helpful to understand what is happening on the shop floor when you are harnessing many talents and telling an intimate story on a large scale.

I envy the happiness of others... I envy the sense of belonging... I seem always to be remaking myself.

I can't think of anyone I admire who isn't fuelled by self-doubt. It's an essential ingredient. It's the grit in the oyster.

I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.

I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

Governments have always been wary of the arts because they're wayward and ambiguous and because they deal with feelings rather than facts.

Everything people say about grandparenthood is true - it is pleasure without responsibility. It is unquestioned love.

Every action has a consequence, so always try to be good.

Don't ever be afraid to ask any question.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Art is about the 'I' in life not the 'we', about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn't acknowledge the private is a life not worth having.

All good actors are very bright. You can't be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them.

A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.

The strangest thing about writing a sitcom, is never knowing if it will become anything but words on a page.

If you had of told me age 10 that in 19 years time I would be on a stage in Salford performing with Les Dennis in a sitcom I had written, I would have believed you.

I was a precocious child.

I told the ambulance men the wrong blood type for my ex, so he knows what rejection feels like.

I knew 'Be Our Guest' would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything.

I don't know if I was funny as a child, though I always thought my parents really enjoyed listening to me sing.

Health food shops can make people feel very important; it's like a brand new religion with people trying to convert you to quinoa.

A problem shared is attention gained.

When I first came to the United States in 1956 I fell in love with things - mainly the vitality and the freedoms.

Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group.

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.