Quotes from Joanna Lumley

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It's understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels.

We transported eight giraffes, and there are now nine because one gave birth to a male shortly afterwards. They carry their pregnancies very well-they all looked the same.

I love being a grandmother. That feeling you have for your own child - you don't ever think it will be replicated, and I did wonder if I would have to 'pretend' with my grandchildren. But my heart was taken on day one.

That's the staggering, humorous thing about money. If you haven't got taste, money doesn't matter: You'll always look ghastly.

Greece has got something like 1,400 islands. There is so much of Greece you can't know even if you're Greek. It's sprinkled out all around the edge of the Aegean, all over the place. It's already a secret place wherever you go, even if it's somewhere huge like Athens or Corinth. The place enchanted me.

In Ethiopia... you might find a seven-year-old expected to take 15 goats out into the fields for the whole day with only a chapati to eat and his whistle. Why are we so afraid to give our children responsibilities like this?

I'm a pathetic haggler and often give more than the original price out of a misplaced sense of duty.

I would do anything to keep looking the job. I think you make an extra effort if you're on show.

I can't cut out a piece of cloth and make a lovely dress, but I can mend tears in shirts and sew on buttons.

I can't see any difference in having your hair dyed, your teeth fixed, your nose done, or your face smoothed out or lifted.

We met and married when both of us knew exactly what our jobs were. He was only 32, but he'd been all over the place. I'd been working on films and television shows all over the world.

Nobody tells you Rwanda looks like Tuscany with its tiled roofs.

I've been given this blessing, which is my granddaughter. You're no longer just you. You suddenly fit into the chest of drawers of life.

Buy an atlas and keep it by the bed—remember you can go anywhere.

I think laptops should be banned from schools. Until you can prove you can add up on your fingers or think independently in your head, you have learnt nothing.

When you're young, you think life is forever, but it's finite. I'm 68, so even by the maddest measurements, I'm in the last bit of life.

You can't be vain as an actor. In 'Ab Fab,' we were made up as old women with bald wigs and jowly necks, and we looked fantastic.

Ah, Scotland. I am three-parts Scottish and terribly proud of it, although maybe we should divide it into eighths, because my two-eighths are Danish and English, the Lumley part. But the bulk of the rest of me is Scottish - and Scottish ministers especially.

My mother early on taught us to respect all animals, and I mean all animals - not just cats and dogs but rats and snakes and spiders and fish and wildlife, so I really grew up believing they are just like us and just as deserving of consideration.

There is something so quiet and so industrious, something so Viking about the Scots.

As Brits, we love a do, don't we? I adore our national celebrations. If I see a gold coach, you almost need to put me in a straitjacket, I get so excited.

I never mind scrubbing floors, vacuuming or bending and carrying stuff. Each time I do it I think, this is instead of going to the gym.

If your family loves you, you're fine. What you can't grow up without is love.