Dawn French Quotes

I'd like to play a horse, many people think I already have. Either end of the horse would be fine.

My best friend is the most important girl, outside of family, to me. I met her when I went to college and we bonded immediately. I'd do anything for her at any time. We phone each other every day.

Two people occupying the same air. Nothing else in common. Just oxygen.

The best way to lose weight is to put the handle of the fridge two inches from the ground.

My approach to parenting is that everything is open - everything. I'm not very good at covert, or subtle, and I've had to learn timing. I do blunder in a bit.

But tarry a while, haste is the arch-enemy of delight.

I don't know why I feel so crazy ... I feel like I'm going through a stargate. Maybe it's the diet pills. Maybe it's Buddha.

I've chosen to stay in a jolly place for most of my life, and that is a lot of who I am.

Young people need their own private places which mothers don't belong to, even if they want mother all around the edge of that.

We were a bit like bacon and eggs, where y'know, the chicken is involved, but the pig is really committed? I totally gave myself to it just as we promised, "for better or worse", and you didn't see it like that.

I've never disliked myself, and my weight has had nothing to do with my self-esteem.

I am a kid in the dressing-up box at heart.

I think of myself now as a writer, although I wouldn't go as far as to say 'novelist' because that sounds like a Victorian person.

It was fantastic to work in Cornwall partly because my family live there so I was able to do lots of visiting and eat lots of cake. They live all over Cornwall and all over Devon.

There is a latent fairy in all women, but look how carefully we have to secrete her in order to be taken seriously. And fairies come in all shapes, colours, sizes and types, they don't have to be fluffy. They can be demanding and furious if hey like. They do, however, have to wear a tiara. That much is compulsory.

Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.

Never was there a creature more appropriately placed to be the poster girl for euthanasia.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

In actual life I am a grumpy old bag.

I'll always be a fat girl and I am happy with that.

I keep my own personality in a cupboard under the stairs at home so that no one else can see it or nick it.

Other than my memory being a bit woolly and my knees being a bit creaky, I don't really think there's anything I can't do.

We have to do a film parody for Comic Relief. We can't decide which film to parody at the moment. Any ideas welcome, but not Spiderman owing to costume being too tight.

I've often said the most difficult things I have to say to people through humour. I can very quickly put someone in their place with it. But we all walk away unscathed because there's been some funnies around it, and I'll usually make sure that it comes back at me.

Turning 50 can be difficult, sometimes dangerous, for women. The danger is in that blip that can come from the fact that you become invisible, and if you're not careful and don't embrace that, it can trip you up and you lose confidence.

I don't read novels whilst I'm writing one; I just haven't got a wide enough brain to concentrate on incoming and outgoing in the same time zone.

I want to do something where I play Judi Dench's younger sister or daughter.

If I were alive in Rubens's time, I'd be celebrated as a model. Kate Moss would be used as a paint brush.

I know what it's like to struggle for cash. When I went to drama school, I worked as a chambermaid to make ends meet.

I do think you are supposed to go through wars with your child because otherwise the tearing apart that has to happen when they go off to lead their own life would be unbearable.

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.

My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake, it was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. I tell myself that I am the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do. I am the sort of person who has several companies, so I do. I am the sort of person WHO WRITES A BOOK! So I do. It's the process of having faith in the self you don't quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that's it. The further I walk, the stronger I become. So unlike the real lived life, where the further you walk, the more your hips hurt.

People need to learn to take everyone as they are.

For the first time ever, I was alone in a different country. I was nervous about how I was going to cope in this big bustling city and so I employed a technique which still serves me well today. I imagined myself as someone who relished new exciting opportunities, who was utterly unafraid and perpetually optimistic. It was a kind of reinvention. Everyone I met was new. These people didn't know me, there was no shared history, so I could be anything or anyone I wanted to be. My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake. It was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now.

The theatre is one of those muscles - if you don't exercise it, it becomes a strange and truly fearful place.

I'm constantly astounded by how amazing women are. And as we go through all these different stages of life as long as you share them with others and say, 'Well, this is bloody weird', you can get through everything.

That's the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn't really matter if it's short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that's all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don't because they seem to suffer from self-hatred that precludes them from imagining that a big woman could ever love herself because they don't. But I do. I know what I've got is a bit strange and difficult to love but those are the very aspects that I love the most! It's a bit like people. I've never been particularly attracted to the uniform of conventional beauty. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who feel compelled to conform. I personally like the adventure of difference. And what's beauty, anyway?

Why would anyone want to be called a size zero or even aspire to being a zero? I don't even understand the thinking behind it, let alone the practicalities. What is all that about?

I never do any television without chocolate. That's my motto and I live by it. Quite often I write the scripts and I make sure there are chocolate scenes. Actually I'm a bit of a chocolate tart and will eat anything. It's amazing I'm so slim.

You have to let kids live their own lives and make their mistakes, but it is difficult now because there are so many things in their lives which weren't in mine - I never had Facebook. And some of the things I see now I'm appalled by. So I'm as nosey about my daughter's life as I can be. I tell her, 'I'm all over you, whether you like it or not.'

My daughter couldn't care less about me being famous. She finds it revolting and, like a lot of teenagers, is virtually allergic to me. That started at 12 and hasn't gone anywhere yet.

I love it when somebody makes me laugh - it's what attracts me to people.

Get a move on, pal, life goes on happening while you're hiding ...

I am a rubbish flirt.

She didn't know that I was dead inside, that I had ruled out the chance of joy ever again. Of that night and every other night to follow. I had fully settled into my unhappiness and wore it comfortably. So comfortably in fact, that it was barely perceptible to others. It just fitted me so well. My suit of misery hung happily on me. So happily that she assumed I could have "a lovely night" in it. The loveliness she referred to was so extremely far out of reach for me. It as far as ... the bloody moon.

I've always loved kissing. We all do, don't we?