Quotes by Maggie Smith

There's nothing simpler than avoiding people you don't like. Avoiding one's friends, that's the real test.

I think lots of actors are very nervous and shy. I know lots of them who are, and some who aren't of course.

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

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost -- it's there and then it's gone.

I had a very good English teacher who said to me that she thought I ought to do it. She -- I don't know, she saw something thank goodness because I think if it hadn't been encouraged by somebody that serious, I'm not sure what would've happened to me.

I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.

I just did adore Daniel -- Daniel Radcliffe, who I had worked with before Harry Potter and spent a long time telling all the producers they had to see him because I thought he was so terrific. And it's been sad thinking about it because of Alan Rickman.

I think he Leonardo DiCaprio is a terrific actor. And I've -- I've been rooting and voting for him since Gilbert Grape. I thought he was so amazing in that one. He was a young man, really very young boy.

I think there's always great tension because there never seems to be enough -- there is always pressure. There's always pressure because there isn't enough time. There's never enough time for a movie, it seems to me. Never.

A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people.

I'm so moved to hear Celia Johnson again, so lovely.

I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much. I think of Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy. But they always seem to be fairly successful, so it's a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five-years-old.

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.

Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

There was nobody in the family who had ever done anything like that before. My brothers -- I had two brothers. They were twins. They both became architects. They were both six years older.

It was -- it's always very nice to be somebody rather grand.

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

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.

Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.

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.

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

I think everybody who was in it thought they were all going to be Eartha Kitt or be big stars. That didn't happen, but it was a wake-up call to have one's first professional job on Broadway, I must say.

We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.

I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.

I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it's because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I'm reliving my own mother's experience of raising me.

Some people say you have to fight cancer. But it was fighting me. The cure was worse than the disease, and it left me totally exhausted and depressed. I just hid myself away in my daughter-in-law's flat.

If you are being gentle with yourself during a difficult time, that is not self-pity. You would show compassion to a friend in pain, even a stranger, so why withhold it from yourself? Don't. Keep moving.

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

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

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

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

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.

If you're lucky, I think you know what you want to do with your life. I think that's a greater gift that any of the gifts you might have when you do know, if you know what I mean. It must be awful to not know what to do.

When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn't about fame. It was about acting.

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

I've been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you've done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it's a great burden if you're one of those fantastic stars who've always been beautiful; then I think it's hard.

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.

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

I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.

Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.

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.

I do love comedy, and when it's a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

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.

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.

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.

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

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

My uncle Sammy was an angry man. He had printed on his tombstone, what are you looking at?

Only when all images of Earth are hushed and the clamor of the senses be stilled, and the soul has passed beyond thought of self, can the eternal wisdom be revealed to the mystic who seeks that highest communion with the unseen.

I hate people. People make me pro-nuclear.

Multiple Personality Disorder--MPD--is not a game. It's not acting to impress anyone. Trust me, survivors do not receive positive attention for being multiple. Anyone who fakes it would be setting themselves up for a lot of rejection.

Safety was not a big thing when I was growing up. A seat belt was something that got in the way: 'Ma, the seat belt is digging into my back.' 'Stuff it down into the seat. And roll those windows up, you're letting the smoke out'

If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said No.

I went out to dinner with a Marine last weekend. He looked across the table and he goes, I could kill you in seven seconds. I go, I'll just have toast, then.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. And it's a train.

I can't get a relationship to last longer than it takes to make copies of their tapes.

Sin recognized but that may keep us humble, But oh, it keeps us nasty.

The best contraceptive is the word no -- repeated frequently.

I don't visit my parents often because Delta Airlines won't wait in the yard while I run in.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.