228 Quotes by Emma Thompson

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.

I hate the way market forces try to separate us out in to the appropriate demographic – basically in order to sell us things. We need to find stories that we can enjoy together, not separately.

Sometimes I get to put on posh frocks and be Madam Glamour, the vendor of my wares. My lovely friend Kath, a stylist, puts me into things I’d never dream of. But my real life is very different. It’s very, very home-based – an intense domestic life, that’s the core of everything.

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.

I’ve never been on the cover of Empire. I’m very bitter. I’ve got an award but now I feel sad and cross.

Just write. It doesn’t matter what you write. Just sit at your desk and write.

You can’t be a great mum and work the whole time necessarily; those two things aren’t ideal. We have an awful lot to work on and to debate about in relation to our working lives, because it isn’t working for a lot of people, particularly for a lot of women.

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.

And it’s absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating – and the levels of the communication that I’ve seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don’t we have that here?