Quotes from Glenda Jackson

My fear with 'Lear' was that I would not have the physical or vocal strength. But this play, it's all in your head. That was one of the really interesting things when we were rehearsing it: We were all exhausted because it was all up here.

It would be nice if education was free to everyone who wanted it, but that's not the world we live in.

Ive always been ambitious to be very good at what I do.

Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: Greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees.

You can go onto that stage every night, and it's always the equivalent of going onto the topmost diving board, and you don't know if there's any water in the pool.

It always amazed me - it still does - that people offer me work. And when the theater was my basic bread and butter, every time a show finished, I was convinced I would never work again.

Motherhood is the most dangerous and awesome relationship possible. ... The parent/child blood relationship is one-sided and irrevocable and enduring. And it is all rather humbling.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

My money goes to my agent, then to my accountant and from him to the tax man.

I studiously avoid any academic dissections of the play and any kind of previous experience of playing. For me, it's all in the play.

Anything I could have done that was legal to get Margaret Thatcher's government out I was prepared to do. I could not believe what she was doing to this country.

What interested me, was that as we age, those seemingly unbreakable barriers that define us, our gender, they begin to crack, to blur; they're not absolutes anymore.

I was blessed by my parents and my antecedents by a very strong work ethic. I mean, being a Member of Parliament is 24/7, just as much as when you're actually doing a play. It's not quite 24/7, but it's the work that counts.

No, I'm not recognized in London. What would people recognize?

One hell of an outlay for a very small return, with most of them.

Rock Hudson. He was an absolute human being. Charming, funny, real.

I told them I wouldn't sign a blank cheque.

I've always said the first duty of life is to live it, and I do believe that. And we delude ourselves if we think it's not going to end. How we individually meet that, I think, is entirely individual.

My life was transformed by the Labour government of 1945. It was transformative for millions of people like me, you know - education, the health service. It was proof that politics can make life better for people; that a social dream can become a social reality by the power of government.

As I've had occasion to say before, I'm a pretty anti-sociable Socialist.

If I'm too strong for some people, that's their problem.

I turn my feet in when I'm sitting down. I tend to put my arms across me when I'm sat thinking; I bend forwards. Loads of protective curves.

I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.

Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh, well, I think of my sex life.