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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Dear Lord, I'm so grateful I'm still loved.

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I think Edith Evans is the most marvelous actress in the world and she can look beautiful. People who aren't beautiful can look beautiful. She can look as beautiful as Diana Cooper, who was the most beautiful woman in the world.

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Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.

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People who are very beautiful make their own laws.

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I'm not a film star; I am an actress. Being a film star is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity.

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I'm not young. What's wrong with that?

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Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show.

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But I remember the morning after The Mask of Virtue-which is the first play I did at the West End-that some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said-for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well, and have never forgiven him.

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I've always been mad about cats.

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