It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk.

The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.

I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.

It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.

I do love comedy, and when it's a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.

I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don't know what the future holds, if anything.

I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.

I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

I've been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you've done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it's a great burden if you're one of those fantastic stars who've always been beautiful; then I think it's hard.

If you're lucky, I think you know what you want to do with your life. I think that's a greater gift that any of the gifts you might have when you do know, if you know what I mean. It must be awful to not know what to do.

Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.

My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places?

The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.

When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn't about fame. It was about acting.

When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.

There's nothing simpler than avoiding people you don't like. Avoiding one's friends, that's the real test.

In fact, Social Security is the only source of income nationwide for 29 percent of unmarried elderly women.

Traditionally, Medicare's assurance has been that for the elderly and persons with disabilities that they will not be alone when confronted with the full burden of their health care costs.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

A lot of kids do look up to us. But there are just as many elderly people to put us down.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

Many Americans are unaware that we still have a large population of working families, elderly, and children who rely on emergency food pantries, shelters, and other resources to meet their nutritional needs.

This administration is cutting the programs that our Nation and its citizens need most, while dissolving the safety nets created to protect the elderly and less fortunate in this wealthy Nation.

Let me be clear - I want all Louisiana citizens to have choice - including the elderly and persons with disabilities - and their families - who rely on the state for their care.

Some writing and production projects will be a great way to spend my elderly rock years.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married.

Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven't had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.

I remember once having to stop performing when I thought an elderly man a few rows back from the front was actually going to die because he was laughing so hard.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

And as a child I was filled with passionate admiration for acts of civic courage I had seen performed by an elderly military doctor, who was a friend of my family.

I believe that if you are elderly, physically or mentally handicapped we have an obligation too you, but if you are able-bodied, you should be working.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

Hollywood does not write parts for people like me, an elderly gentleman, and when they find out you're crippled, forget about it. No, I'll never work again.