Vanessa Redgrave

“I think everybody, including myself, are in danger of losing our humanity.”

“Principles aren't something you hear much from politicians these days. Have you noticed? Right across the board, leaders, whatever the political coloring, avoid talking about laws; they avoid talking about principles. They talk about 'our values.' But values can change, and all our packets of 'values' seem to be getting smaller.”

“I acted with Albie at Stratford-on-Avon in the 1959 season. We in the acting company tended to hang out at the pub known as the Dirty Duck.”

“Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings.”

“Ask the right questions if you're to find the right answers.”

“I don't want to spend my last few whatever it is, months or years on this earth, giving speeches.”

“A film can open hearts and minds that have been closed, for whatever reasons.”

“A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived.”

“Just being alive, staying human, I think that's infinitely precious.”

“Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living.”

“I thought my story, my experiences as a 2-year-old 'evacuee' from London at the outset of the war, could be important. What happened to me as a child was very light compared to what happened to many children, but... in Britain, there are so many people who just don't know our history.”

“The stories of the first refugees that I ever came across in literature - that lots of people ever came across - were in 'The Iliad': the escape of Aeneas with his father on his back, the Trojans, from their burning city, and the defeat of their kingdom and what they had to do to try and find safety.”

“Politics is about divisions. Wherever you come in on the subject, there are divisions.”

“I don't think my life has been badly lived - but I don't think of it that way. And nor should I.”

“The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think.”

“Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.”

“The notion of 'building a career' had never been heard or dreamed of when I was young.”

“People talk about preaching to the converted, which is total codswallop rubbish. There is no such thing as being converted forever - absolutely no such thing.”

“We are child-bearers primarily, and we are the weaker sex, and once we've given birth to our children, our life is by necessity bound to them. I wouldn't advocate it any other way.”

“In my early days, I auditioned a lot. Mostly, I didn't get anywhere.”