This Much is True

by Miriam Margolyes

It’s possible that my insecurity is the very quality that connects me to everyone else. I don’t hide my vulnerability. I don’t know how.

They educated me about Palestine, for example. And that was a difficult one. It still is hard.

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

It cemented my view of men as flawed and incomplete beings, incapable of sexual control. Nothing in my life since has led me to change my mind.

I am fuelled by curiosity and thinking that I can somehow be a shining light, a good Samaritan and help. But in this instance I made things much, much worse. It was a real lesson.

I quote Miss Plowman: ‘Remember, vowels carry the emotion in a word – consonants carry the sense.’ Dame Maggie Smith, another of the High School’s illustrious former pupils, was also taught by her.

I realise now that telling people things that they can’t deal with is an indulgence.

I know that kindness and gentleness are the most valuable commodities. Now, more than ever, they demand distribution.

I project energy. I don’t project cunt, but exhausted cunt I can offer, vocally, when required.

If you get the wrong person, it can tear you apart.

We are all scared. We are all secretly shaking with fright inside, uncertain of what we should be doing, saying and thinking; anxious about what our lives are going to be. I believe that if you can allay those fears, if you can soothe people, and hug them, and make them feel it’s going to be all right, you’re doing a public service. Often most of us are too busy, or worried, or tired, or just can’t be bothered to take on the difficulties that another person is going through. But if you can, it makes the most enormous difference to try to understand the other person, to try to feel their pain, and to see the world through their eyes.