Maureen Lipman

“I do have opinions. Fortunately, I neither Twitter nor Facebook. My daughter forbids me to go on social media.”

“A lot of us, it's very hard to distinguish between wanting a job and wanting to show off. I don't know the difference, I never have.”

“Actors are always being asked to speak. Sometimes there is a well-honed script, often there is not. But we are well-practised in the art of words and the power of their meaning. We know when to project and when to stay silent. We understand better than most that the pen is mightier than the sword. We live it.”

“I've often unwittingly done the wrong thing; most things you mess up in life you do through nerves.”

“On all these Pop Idol-style programmes, the 'experts' on the panel are always saying things like: 'Follow your dream,' and you reach for the sick bag.”

“I don't sit around thinking about my absence from society, because I'm too busy getting on with life.”

“If I go somewhere, I want to interact with the locals, not just stay cooped up in a little English enclave.”

“We stayed in a hotel in Marbella once that was still being built and should never have had guests.”

“I'm not very keen on man-made places - so I know I wouldn't like Dubai either. In fact, I look for the exact opposite when I go on holiday.”

“Whenever I talk to young people, I can never understand why they don't invite me out clubbing.”

“I was always keen to be liked but not very good at doing the things that got you approval, except from my friends. I was excellent at running a gang, making people laugh and hiding under the desk in other people's double geography lessons.”

“My mother, Zelma, was an influence on my career. When I was six or seven I started singing, imitating people like Eartha Kitt, and putting on my own Sunday Night at the London Palladium. My mother encouraged me to perform for her friends.”

“I woke up too soon from an operation, unanaesthetised but unable to speak, and thought I was going to die from the pain.”

“I am judgmental.”

“The history of the world is smattered with peoples being removed from the land of their birth. None of them ever got their country back.”

“Any day now, the word ubiquitous will permanently prefix my name.”

“Florence Foster Jenkins was born in Pennsylvania in 1868 and left home because her father refused to allow her to fulfil her ambition to sing in public. Now, many might say that Pop Jenkins had it completely right and the daughter had it wrong, but those who we think are losers are often winners and vice-versa.”

“Director Sydney Lumet is so patient.”

“I'm well on my way to becoming one of those grumpy old actresses with faces like crocodile handbags who live out their days surrounded only by wagging tails and wet noses, believing mankind to be warmongering and feckless.”

“Yes, maybe we do get thrown on to the scrapheap after a certain age, but that's fair enough, isn't it? The same thing happens to a leaf on a tree.”