This Much is True

by Miriam Margolyes

I’ve always wanted to know people. It’s curiosity partly, because I can’t imagine that people are different from me, and yet I can’t imagine anyone being the same. This paradox is at the heart of all our intercommunication: ‘Are you like me?’ ‘Why are you not like me?’ ‘Could you be like me?’

Friends bring out the best in me, and that’s what I cherish: they make me feel that I am worth knowing. Maybe it’s a good idea, as Shakespeare said, to bind your friends to you with hoops of steel. They certainly are my armour and my fortress.

My country right or wrong doesn’t work for me. I’m on the side of Humanity; if I see a wrong, I feel I must do my best to right it. That is who I am.

You should always be as polite, careful and caring to people as you possibly can be. But if people are nasty and cruel, then fuck it – they’ve got it coming.

The goal of life is to end up wiser. But more importantly, I think it should be to end up kinder, both to yourself and everyone around you (unless, of course, their surname happens to be Johnson).