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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Maggie Smith Quotes

I tend to head for what’s amusing because a lot of things aren’t happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.

– Maggie Smith

The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn’t ask them.

– Maggie Smith

There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.

– Maggie Smith

When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn’t about fame. It was about acting.

– Maggie Smith

I’ve been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you’ve done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it’s a great burden if you’re one of those fantastic stars who’ve always been beautiful; then I think it’s hard.

– Maggie Smith

I do love comedy, and when it’s a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.

– Maggie Smith

When you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.

– Maggie Smith

I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.

– Maggie Smith

I fear that I won’t work in the theatre again. I’m sad about that. But I won’t retire.

– Maggie Smith

If you’re lucky, I think you know what you want to do with your life. I think that’s a greater gift that any of the gifts you might have when you do know, if you know what I mean. It must be awful to not know what to do.

– Maggie Smith

Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.

– Maggie Smith

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

– Maggie Smith

I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It’s odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.

– Maggie Smith

People say it gets better but it doesn’t. It just gets different, that’s all.

– Maggie Smith

Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.

– Maggie Smith

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn’t really happen.

– Maggie Smith

The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.

– Maggie Smith

An actor is somebody who communicates someone else’s words and emotions to an audience. It’s not me. It’s what writers want me to be.

– Maggie Smith

It’s true I don’t tolerate fools but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

– Maggie Smith

My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

– Maggie Smith

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it’s there it’s stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

– Maggie Smith

The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn’t have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places?

– Maggie Smith

Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.

– Maggie Smith

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.

– Maggie Smith

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn’t think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don’t know what the future holds, if anything.

– Maggie Smith

I said ‘It can’t go on’ and he said ‘No, it can’t.’ Honestly, I don’t think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.

– Maggie Smith