Quotes

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and the right kind of physique ought to make a film actor, if they are lucky enough to be told exactly what to do, and I cannot see that the actor for the screen deserves any more credit than a schoolboy who is good at dictation should have for writing admirable prose.

Often I am laughed at when I first am given a part, because I say at once: 'What rings shall I wear?' Luckily I have some hundred and fifty to choose from, and I can generally find one that suits the character.

There is no occupation in the world so absorbing as trying to paint. Everything, every worry, is for the moment forgotten in the effort, however unsuccessful, of creating a masterpiece. To the surprise of many and the horror of some, I have also found great pleasure in needlework, which, after all, is only another way of making pictures.

I have a shelf all round my dining room about a foot from the ceiling and there my luster lives, out of reach of possible breakages, or so I thought. During the war I took every piece down and stored them in safety. When the bombing stopped they went back to form a glittering frieze which brightens the room. But, alas, I didn't realize that the foundations of the shelves on which my treasures stood had been weakened by the vibration of the guns, and one day I heard a terrifying crash as one third of the shelf came away from the wall and with it about twenty pieces of glass which lay in smithereens on the floor, among them some of my much valued 'Varnish London' pieces, which though heavier and more solid than the fairings, were too badly damaged to be repaired. In order to console myself I told myself that the fewer pieces there were in existence of this particular make the more valuable the survivors would be.