I had toured around England endlessly throughout my teens, but when I came to the U.S. to perform on Broadway, that was a huge step.

I play with my grandchildren. I tend to my garden, which I love. Of course, I love to read, and family is really what it's all about.

I thought it was all a flash in the pan. It wasn't until Broadway came along that I felt I had really made it.

I am very proud to be British. I'm very conscious of carrying my country with me wherever I go. I feel I need to represent it well.

On the whole, I think women wear too much and are to fussy. You can't see the person for all the clutter.

More than anything, the arts are the best teaching tool.

I've always admired gardens. My father was a great nature lover and would always take me for walks. We lived not too far away from huge rhododendron estates and azalea estates, and when they're in bloom in England, they're just riotous.

I don't think today's younger audience... would even know what 1920s musicals were like.

I would be a fool to deny my own abilities.

I did all of my learning on 'My Fair Lady.'

I've made my pact with the Lord for the next lifetime. I would love to be a first-class musician. A super one.

I turned down 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brody' with Maggie Smith. I think she got the Academy Award.

All careers go up and down like friendships, like marriages, like anything else, and you can't bat a thousand all the time.

I am thrilled to be dame. It's one of those - the fact that you have been honored by your country is what it's all about, and it just feels good right there.

I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.

I justified working so hard by knowing that I was helping to maintain the roof over our heads.

I'd say just go with the flow. And I take my hat off to any mother out there who works full-time and raises a family as well. It's hard work.

I was a child prodigy who had a freak voice of something like four octaves.

If you've been fortunate enough to do a film that appeals to the entire family, that's the audience that's probably going to come back to you in something else.

I adored my birth father and constantly worried that I was being disloyal to him and his schoolteacher roots if I spent too much time performing and enjoying it.

I've got a good right hook.

When I've least expected it, an enormous opportunity or stroke of luck has crossed right under my nose. So I tell everybody, if you're passionate about what you do and you love it, do it. But do your homework. Because you'll never know when the opportunity is going to happen.

I love to prune my roses. That's the one thing I really feel I do pretty well. Other things I usually, because I travel so much, leave to my gardeners who know what I love. But I do love to prune them, because you forget everything else. It's like if you're a painter, you can forget everything else while you're doing it.

For me, whenever I choose a song to sing, it's about the lyric first.

I was named after my two grandmothers - Julia Elizabeth.

Because of the Thames I have always loved inland waterways - water in general, water sounds - there's music in water. Brooks babbling, fountains splashing. Weirs, waterfalls; tumbling, gushing.

I had a lot of learning on my feet.

I'm not very good with rap and things like that.

I'm beginning to think that I like the behind-the-scenes work as much as I do in front of the camera as I get a little bit older.

I didn't know other children from divorced families, and I was a bit of a lost soul for a while. Then suddenly, I was performing. And it gave me an identity.

I had no education whatsoever, and my mother said, 'Oh, you'll get a much better education in life.' I did to some extent, though I always wish I could have tried it.

The loveliest roles, for me, have a growth arc - a beginning, a middle, and an end - and I'm always grateful when I can find one of those emotional journeys.

'Simeon's Gift' is really - it's about a musician who - in the Middle Ages, who goes out to find his muse.

I think it's the essence of any film and any stage production - any work where you do work with other people - of course collaboration is hugely important. One does, for awhile, become family.

When you are traveling in vaudeville, you experience so many different kinds of audiences, depending on what time of the week it is, how long the pubs have been open, and things like that.

I was a very sad little girl.

I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness, and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being.

I did a lot of touring in my youth, and I learnt very quickly that giving is what it's all about. It's about the gift of making an audience feel great and forget their cares, if only for a few hours.

My sense of the family history is somewhat sketchy, because my mother kept a great deal to herself.

Let me put it this way: I can sing a hell of an 'Old Man River,' way down in the bass.

Some of my own books are being developed - one as a Broadway musical.

I have been called a nun with a switchblade where my privacy is concerned. I think there's a point where one says, that's for family, that's for me.

Every time I go out to perform, believe me. You never lose that fear of, 'I hope I do it right. I hope I don't fall flat on my face. I hope this will be good for them.'

My parents were in Vaudeville, in musical. And I would tour with them and had a couple of wonderfully lucky breaks in England.

Who would have thought that a story about a professor of phonetics would result in it being probably one of the great shows ever for musical theatre? It's a seemingly odd subject.

I think I'm just proudest to be the lady who was asked to play Mary Poppins. She's such a wonderful character, and there's so much tremendous talent out there. So I feel very lucky to be the one who got to play her.

I was working from a very early age.

I really feel very blessed, and I don't forget it, either; there's an awful lot of wonderful talent in this world, and I just seem to be in the right place at the right time.

Touring itself - and I was very young, and a lot of it I did by myself - it's lonely, but it does give you some kind of spine, I think. It does give you some kind of grit.

My voice needed oiling, and then it took off.