Quotes by Emma Thompson

“Its unfortunate and I really wish I wouldnt have to say this, but I really like human beings who have suffered. Theyre kinder.”

“I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isnt much of a stretch.”

“This whole thing is like a cross between a very severe virus and getting married.”

“If youve got to my age, youve probably had your heart broken many times. So its not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.”

“I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word -- politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.”

“The gap was so long because it needed to be. It took that time - thats the time it took,”

“I would say to people, for heavens sake, if youre going to have kids youve got to put the work and the time into it.”

“Its lovely to be here, and at least its, you know, no effort.”

“It was a hard time but you have to get on with things.You cant wander around miserable.”

“I think our hearts are very chemical and we change the way we see people according to how we feel about them. Thats what love is, in a way.”

Can he love her? Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn - to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise...

Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane whos visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. Shes fascinated by cholesterol. Says its very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.I check this out for myself. What does Jane do? I ask.Science, he says vaguely.

I think books are like people, in the sense that theyll turn up in your life when you most need them.

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line Dont palm all your abuses [of language upon me] was possibly too rude. Its in the book, I said. He didnt hit me.

Shooting Willoughby carrying Marianne up the path. ... Male strength -- the desire to be cradled again? ... Id love someone to pick me up and carry me off. Frightening. Lindsay assures me Id start to fidget after a while. Shes such a comfort.

I dont have technique because I never learnt any.

Lindsay [Doran] goes round the table and introduces everyone -- making it clear that I am present in the capacity of writer rather than actress, therefore no one has to be too nice to me.

Horror. I cant manage it. I become--well--horrified. Self-help books have a similar effect. When asked, Any literary genre you simply cant be bothered with? - (By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from the NYT Book Review, by Pamela Paul)

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.

My godfather sad that story was abut taking the chaotic jigsaw of life, making it into a picture and putting a frame around it so that we could look at it, have control over it. Story and art are the humanizing elements of us.