Quotes from Emma Thompson

I don't have technique because I never learnt any.

Sometimes I get to put on posh frocks and be Madam Glamour, the vendor of my wares. My lovely friend Kath, a stylist, puts me into things I'd never dream of. But my real life is very different. It's very, very home-based - an intense domestic life, that's the core of everything.

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.

London has always been a haven for victims of cruelty, and been improved by them. Yet I can see it changing now. Outsiders are demonised, there are little bits of legislation, people are scared.

I was brought up by very witty people who were dealing with quite difficult things: disease and death... I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals.

Tell him I mind having to look pretty, that's what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort.

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.

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

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening.

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