Quotes By Maggie Smith

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.

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

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

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

I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much.

I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.

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 last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back.

It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see. I can only hope that's correct, because there's an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.

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

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

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?

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.

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

People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you.

I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.

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.

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

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.

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 a difference between solitude and loneliness.

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.