My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary.

Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.

My parents were very pleased that I was in the army. The fact that I hated it somehow pleased them even more.

New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.

To live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one's mother.

Am I old-fashioned? I think I might be. I am a lucky woman, because I was born with a priceless gift... the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.

I denied this for many, many years and years... but you cannot help but not see a little of my mother in the character of Edna.

I feel like I've cheated. I never knew what to do. I was never a good enough painter to earn a living, and so I drifted into the theatre, and I've had a successful life. I feel guilty that I've never done a day's work in my life!

I guess you could say I'm an addict - an adrenalin addict - I get great excitement and stimulation from doing stuff in public, even though I'm nervous and I have very bad stage fright.

I have beautiful, beautiful clothes, designed by my bachelor boy son, Kenny. Kenny has a big following as it is, and even Lady Gaga has asked Kenny to design dresses for her. But Kenny isn't very keen on, well, shall we say, extreme women. He likes someone that women all over the world can identify with.

I have charity work that I do. I started my own charity, the Friends of the Prostate, and I'm also working on awareness of the deviated septum. I do this because not many people are interested in it. There's also Save the Funnel-web - they're dying out.

I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.

I say things other people wish they could say. I don't pick on people - I empower them.

I suffer greatly from nerves. I have stage-fright badly, and it gets worse, but the stage is still my life.

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman.

I'm approaching 70. Unfortunately, from the wrong direction.

I've decided the secret of parenting is benevolent neglect.

I've played Beckett. I put on in the 1950s the first Australian production of 'Waiting for Godot.' I played Estragon. The most interesting conversation I've had about Beckett was with a Dublin taxi driver.

In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

My husband passed away a long time ago, and of course a lot of people have courted me. I've been taken to dinner and also to things like Larry Hagman, in particular years ago. And more recently, of course, little Hugh Jackman - and he's too young for me though, frankly.

Now the point of comedy is not just looking funny, it's use of language. We have at our disposal a great language... and the imaginative, creative use of that language can be at the service of humour.

Oddly enough, Dame Edna is not interested in show business. Her friends in Los Angeles are mostly in the world of petroleum. She used to have some acting friends. Sadly, Joan Rivers has passed on. Larry Hagman was a close friend. A number of others.

People only watch my shows for me, and those shows have remained evergreen long after the guests are forgotten.

Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.

There's to be a film about my life. I can give this as an exclusive now. Meryl Streep was offered the part but, no, I wanted Kate Winslet. Kylie Minogue is playing me in middle age. In old age, I'm not sure who's going to play me. I haven't got there yet. Perhaps Cate Blanchett. Or Jacki Weaver.

What is extraordinary about the character of Edna - and I speak as though I am completely outside this character and I am talking to you - I'm, as it were, in the wings, and she's on stage, and every now and then she says something extremely funny, and I stand there and think: 'I wish I'd thought of that.'

Fish are friends not food.

There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken serously.

If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up.

There is no more terrible fate for a comedian than to be taken seriously.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

They're not shooting me for deserting the United Stated Army - thousands of guys have done that. They're shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old.

The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all. We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France.

Maybe the answer to Selective Service is to start everyone off in the army and draft them for civilian life as needed.

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.

Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then.

A zeal for the defence of their country led these heroes to the scene of action, though with a few men to attack a powerful army of experienced warriors.

Most of the services staff is for the larger corporations, not so much for small and medium businesses because they cannot afford an extensive services army.

Our strategy is to defend ourselves against an occupying army and against settlers and settlements.

The secularists in Turkey haven't underestimated religion, they just made the mistake of believing they could control it with the power of the army alone.

We were pretty good mates until the Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it. It was more like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells.

As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers.

Debt is such a powerful tool, it is such a useful tool, it's much better than colonialism ever was because you can keep control without having an army, without having a whole administration.