Top 116 Quotes & Sayings by Emma Thompson - Page 2

Is love a fancy or a feeling.... or a Ferrars?

I think my first bout of that was when I was doing me and My Girl, funnily enough. I really didn't change my clothes or answer the phone, but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. She said: “The only thing I could do was write. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was alright, because I was not present. “Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.

Laughter is a celebration of our failings. That's what clowns are for. And that's what I am.

Marianne Dashwood looks at gray skies and sees blue. That's all very well, and it's not something you ever want entirely to lose. But you must lose a little of it; otherwise you're going to get wet.

There is a painful difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event and its final certainty.

It's not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that's made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much?

If you can't fail then how can you possible develop as a communicator or as a creator of anything? We are locked into a deeply unhealthy notion that somehow you've got to succeed all the time. An appalling notion. Any painter or writer will tell you that that is no way to proceed. One of the things that will kill off a decent actor, especially a young actor early on and they will never recover from it, is too much success. It's disastrous. You stop being criticized, therefore you stop challenging yourself. You then can't afford to fail because there's too far to fall.

I've never been on the cover of Empire. I'm very bitter. I've got an award but now I feel sad and cross.

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.

Girlfriends are vital ... Maggie [Gyllenhaal] and I will always see each other when Maggie's in London or I'm here. We'll always make time to sit and catch up properly.

Just write. It doesn't matter what you write. Just sit at your desk and write.

The flashbacks are parallel for me. You experience two storylines at the same time, and I'm not switching from one time to another.

I present the nominees, well, not me the Voice of God, for Best Screenplay.

The films I've made for children have been my hardest work, my best, because kids deserve the best.

I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves. Which I think, actually, is pretty reliable.

There's an awful lot of misunderstanding here about what being poor actually means. I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything. It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.

I think it's [the AIDS fight] the most important and most pressing one - I think it's a global emergency and I think in a way we all have to address it and engage with it because I think it's the biggest threat to the human race that we have ever faced.

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.

If there's a role you're playing and there's a great deal of material to explore because the person was real then it's a completely different preparation time and message to playing someone fictional.

I have a lot of people to thank but they're none of them here so I'm not going to bother.

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel.

We must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are in fact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.

But certainly in Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa, people don't really talk about sex and certainly religious leaders - some of them - up to now have been very unwilling to accept, for instance, the promotion of condom use

What was important was trying to create something that families could watch together and enjoy together

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

The Catholic Church - it's so difficult because I don't want say anything offensive but it makes me very angry that religious leaders from this faith have tried to respond negatively to sexual education and to the promotion of condom use

The insanity of consumption bothers me. Talk about the opiate of the masses. It ain't religion anymore. It's stuff.

My husband is here and I'd like to thank him, for many things, but first of all for pointing out that I had a big hole in my frock and then that my nipples were pointing in different directions. It's good to have an expert there to help you with that sort of thing.

Don't ever go on a diet. Just don't. Walk away. Diets are the spawn of Satan.

I`ve realized that in all the great stories, even if there`s a happily-ever-after ending, there`s something sad.

We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really

I Don't Need the nicotene patch, Penny - I smoke cigarettes.

Anyone who tries to deny #ClimateChange looks a little bit bonkers.

Without the ice, the earth will fall

~I'm strict about manners. I think that kids have a horrible time with other people if they have bad manners.... The one thing you've got to be prepared to do as a parent is not to be liked from time to time.~

It doesn't matter how good the movie is. What matters is what it takes during the opening weekend. It's slightly distressing sometimes but that's how it works.

Let's stop feeling so guilty about global warming

I ask Laurie it it's possible to get trained fish. Lindsay says this is how we know I've never produced a movie.

Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement.

When you buy Fairtrade products you can guarantee that the farmers who have worked hard to grow them get a minimum price. Fairtrade is a way of giving regular support - and enjoying delicious high quality foods at the same time.

Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos.

I think that my work is my attempt, I suppose, is to try and become a piece of connective tissue. I'm trying to communicate with people here and in America - in rich countries - about what I see on the ground in badly affected areas

Constantly worrying about your reflection and criticizing your body, shape and size is an act of violence against yourself.

I think we're creating a situation that's incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of chat at the moment about the war on terror and whilst there are many causes for acts of terrorism, what kind of society are you creating if you allow civil society in Africa to die and create millions upon millions of orphans? Where are they going to go? What kind of cults, what kind of militias, what's going to happen? The accession of violence in those countries, the possibility of that, to me is very terrifying.

Piracy is our only option.

The best way [to survive] the red carpet is by wearing Ugg boots. But unfortunately, I have not yet managed to persuade the people who style me at these times to let me do that.

Well, I met Sandy Bullock at an awards thing a couple years ago, and she said to me, “If I were gay, you’d be the one.” I said, “I’m there!”

I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter, and able to give people a clean drink of water. I don't want images of starving babies at the breast in my mind. I want that to change. And if I want that, I had better do something about it.

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.

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

Once you're a mom, you've been split into two people. It's like Peter Pan and his shadow.

[Fighting Climate Change] is important for every single person on the planet, which is why it has to be the greatest grassroots movement of all time. This is the battle of our lives. We're fighting for our children.

I'm an atheist. I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It's not enough to say that I don't believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Qur'an and I refute them.

Why do we wear them? They're so painful.

I think people say you shouldn't work with children or animals, but you must only work with children.

It's such a cold night and it's the only time I've actively been grateful for menopause. I've been entirely comfortable.