My friends, when I was young, were always older than I was, and I've always liked them. And I love old men and old ladies, really. But I've known more elderly men, like Max Beerbohm, like Beranard Berenson, like Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill-I'd put him first, anyway-what they say is so wise and so good. They know what they're talking about.

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I realize that the memories I cherish most are not the first night successes, but of simple, everyday things: walking through our garden in the country after rain; sitting outside a cafe in Provence, drinking the vin de pays; staying at a little hotel in an English market town with Larry, in the early days after our marriage, when he was serving in the Fleet Air Arm, and I was touring Scotland, so that we had to make long treks to spend weekends together.

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I cannot let well enough alone. I get restless. I have to be doing different things.

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In Britain, an attractive woman is somehow suspect. If there is talent as well, it is overshadowed. Beauty and brains just can't be entertained; someone has been too extravagant. This does not happen in America or on the Continent, for the looks of a woman are considered a positive advertisement for her gifts and don't detract from them.

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Things are simple when you're going to die.

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I loved fencing and dancing and elocution.

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I think acting is an important profession, because acting can give you pleasure and can teach you at the same time, and that is a good thing.

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A lucky thing Eva Peron was. She died at 32. I'm already 45.

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Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.

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My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.

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