Please don't ask which I enjoy more - acting or hosting - because I love them equally.

I have been unusually blessed in that I've been allowed to pursue two strands of a career that both delight me and seem to please the public.

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.

Something about John Cleese was always very unsettled, I felt. There was always something else he wanted to do. He seemed constantly driven by this sense that there was a nirvana somewhere; some unique place where mind, body and soul would be utterly satisfied.

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world.

I've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself.

So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.

I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.

I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert.

Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!

You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to.

I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.

Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.

I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end.

My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.

Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.

I got my first laugh when my mother entered me in a baby contest.

All I ever learned at my mother's knee was what a bony knee looked like.

I'd love to slit my mother-in-law's corsets and watch her spread to death.

I'd love to slit my mother-in-law's corsets and watch her spread to death.

My mother-in-law must be the probation officer I got for the crime I committed of marrying my husband.

My mother hated me. Once she took me to an orphanage and told me to mingle

I should have suspected my husband was lazy. On our wedding day, his mother told me: "I'm not losing a son; I'm gaining a couch."

I was the world's ugliest baby. I have photos of my folks leaving the hospital with sacks over their heads... I asked my mother how to turn off the electric fan. She said 'Grab the blade!

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.

I feel this evening that I am too hopelessly and happily corrupted by the richness of London life to ever be right for Dorset, or vice-versa.

We read poems from the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Neil insisted on spilling wine over my carpet.

I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.

We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.

Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.

Our dog died from licking our wedding picture.

Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.

The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron.

Oh, that dog! Ever hear of a German Shepherd that bites its nails? Barks with a lisp? You say, "Attack!" And he has one. All he does is piddle. He's nothing but a fur-covered kidney that barks.

Every time I go near the stove, the dog howls.

I have so many liver spots, I ought to come with a side of onions.

When I go to the beach, my grandchildren try to make words out of the veins in my legs. That's why I still take the pill; I don't want any more grandchildren.

Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle - keep away from children.

The reason I'm not an alcoholic is I don't like to drink in front of the kids . . . and when you're away from them, who needs it?.

You want to look younger... rent smaller children.

One [expert] said, 'Always have a baby sitter who is acquainted with your children.' If they were acquainted with my children, they wouldn't sit!

We have far too many kids. At one time in the playpen there was standing-room only. It looked like a bus stop for midgets. It used to get so damp in there, we'd have a rainbow above it.