Top 50 Sheila Hancock Quotes

I love computers. I think it’s a miracle that you can type ‘coffee stain’ into a search engine and get a page of answers, but I don’t like the viciousness of the Internet. It gives public voice to quite mad people.

I used to be the sort of person who’d listen to a taxi driver going on about the-country-going-to-the-dogs-blah-blah, and let him rant on. But now I don’t. I find myself letting rip.

I would say that Beethoven’s late string quartets are the nearest to God that we’ll ever get.

I get into an awful lot of trouble for not being polite.

My chin’s too big. And my nose – my nose is funny.

As a child, I was deeply religious and went to church every Sunday.

I think why I’m sometimes fearless is because I’ve found, and this comes with age, if you challenge something your fear goes away.

I love beautiful women. I’m not jealous of them at all.

I’m not a good Quaker, really I’m not, but it’s a lovely thing to aspire to.

It is well known that people who are involved with people who have addictive problems have a problem themselves. You are drawn to mad living, a kind of insane thing. It is much nicer when it stops, believe you me.

I cannot pass by seeing a child shouted at, and people dropping litter. I’m terrible for intervening. There’s nothing worse than busybodies like me. I should learn to mind my own business.

I’ve been married to two mad, bad, dangerous-to-know men and it was good.

Even for those who do survive, tumours can affect the functions of the brain and therefore affect a person’s personality, preventing many people from working, driving and otherwise leading a normal life.

There’s an incredibly grand attitude towards musicals. I don’t understand why my profession is so snooty about it.

I’m always guilt-ridden if I give a bad performance. If you’re doing a theatrical run, your day has to be geared to that show. You can’t mess about, particularly when you get to my age.

On ‘The X Factor,’ they deliberately have people on that are awful just to laugh at them.

My own efforts at peacemaking have been easy – in fact, rather enjoyable: CND marches, demos, protest meetings in Trafalgar and Grosvenor Squares, and visits to the women at Greenham, especially the glorious day in 1983 when thousands of us embraced the base and pinned beautiful pictures and objects to the ugly wire.

I would love to enjoy leisure, but I find it very difficult to sit down and do nothing.

My first husband Alec was a very good-looking man, but by the time he came out of the war, his sort of acting was no longer in demand – although he was a working-class boy, he was actually very good at suave handsome-men parts. I began to get successful when he was out of fashion; it was agony to watch him.

As a Quaker, I aspire to be a pacifist.

I used to pray every night: ‘Please let me look all right from the front.’ I didn’t care about real life, but I wanted to look good for theatre audiences – I worried about having a funny nose.

In 1971, my mother died of cancer and within a year my first husband Alec Ross died, also from cancer.

You know, life is about loss and recovering and starting again. It gets a bit more difficult to start again the older you get. But you can do it, you can do it.

I can’t do solitude.

I wish I could say I was wise and clever, but I’m really not.

I’ve got a great relationship with my oldest grandson because we go to political meetings and lectures, which I love.

I’m wildly left wing, but I’m also a terrible chauvinist.

Solitude is part of my life, and I don’t mind that. I like it. I love it. I don’t allow loneliness to be part of my life, let’s put it that way. I really won’t allow it. If I feel lonely, I phone somebody or I go for a walk or a swim, get the endorphins going, because I hate feeling lonely.

You have to be very careful about your mental health.

In some ways I’m quite strict – in terms of morality, honesty, things like that. And manners.

I sometimes buy the Daily Mail and hide it in my Guardian.

We should be so grateful for musicals, and the amount of work that goes into these shows is easily comparable to things I’ve been in at the National and the RSC. Why do we think it is less important?.

Nobody has a completely happy life, unless you’re completely imbecilic. Life is mostly pretty awful.

I do like Christmas but the build-up is ludicrous. Such a kerfuffle about two meals and a few presents.

Christmas Eve is my wedding anniversary so it is a double whammy.

Prompting children to create imaginary worlds is hugely important.

I was struck during the Brexit debate by how little discussion there was about the origins of the concept of a united Europe.

I’ve never been one of those nanas who pretends to be young.

What I would love to do is more telly comedy. I did a tiny bit in ‘Toast of London’ and was in one episode of Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan.’ I was crying with laughter.

I talk too much and I don’t listen or pause to think.

Being a grandma is lovely.

Alcoholics are utterly dear one minute, but there is also a blanket hatred with which you cannot reason.

I much prefer grandmotherhood to motherhood.

In my early music-loving days, I thought Beethoven was a bit bombastic, a bit heroic, a bit, well, big.

When you’ve been bereaved, you expect other people to rescue you, but I’m afraid they can’t – it’s down to you.

I wouldn’t dream of giving any human being marks out of 10 on two hours’ acquaintance.

I’ve been lucky enough to love dearly the people I cared for, but even then there were times when I thought, ‘I can’t bear any more.’

I was this sort of floozy in ‘The Rag Trade,’ and ‘Mr Digby Darling,’ and ‘Now, Take My Wife’ – the titles say it all.

I love being in my car with Radio 3 on.

I love cars with a passion.