This Much is True

by Miriam Margolyes

we stopped for fish and chips in Lewisham; wrapped in newspaper (it always tasted better, why did they change the law?)

I desperately wanted to be liked. I’d do almost anything to be liked. I haven’t changed.

‘You were naughty, Miriam, but you were never wicked.’

The wall was finally pulled down in 1959, but snobbery is harder to demolish.

I trust everyone until they let me down, and then I never trust them again.

I think it’s because of Miss Davis that I’ve always been a royalist, even though my broader politics tend in the other direction. She made me see kings and queens as real people, as flawed, interesting characters and not as the representation of privilege and repression.

it is the vulnerabilities in people, rather more than their strengths, which allow us to love them.

I want to keep alive the past and support parish churches in the same way. Religion isn’t important to me, but I want to acknowledge the people who took on the challenge of continuing their heritage in a strange land.

This was before feminism: women were not meant to be funny; they were meant to be decorative.

When I see a wrong, I will confront it; I strongly believe in sticking up for what is right. Injustice offends me, deeply.

My world has always been about speech.

We should judge people according to the purity of their morals: the purity of their vowels is neither here nor there.

Men don’t take lesbianism seriously, unless they want to watch.

Mark Rylance is one of the greatest actors in the world. He’s not ‘grand’; he is approachable, loves a laugh, listens attentively and is generous with praise.

I’m with Sir Noël Coward, who said, ‘Learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.’

I go into a little separate booth, put on my headphones, they close the soundproof door so I’m sealed away from the world, and I begin. It’s lonely, but you can keep the pencils.

to me, a sexy voice is an exhausted voice, of somebody who’s had so many orgasms they’ve hardly got the strength to speak.

It’s a hard, miserable fate being fat. And there are loads of fat people who would agree with me. They might not want to be perfect, but they don’t want to be fat, either.

It’s a humiliation that you don’t forget, and even early in life you learn the pain of rejection because your body isn’t wanted.

America does not like, cannot deal with, and is afraid of failure.

You shouldn’t fear failure. It’s not something that we relish – no one wants to fail – but it may be something we have to endure in order to improve and succeed.