Julian Fellowes famous quotes

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mother #Weekend #Problem

No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.
-- Julian Fellowes

#People #States #Humans

It's the gloomy things that need our help, if everything in the garden is sunny, why meddle?
-- Julian Fellowes

#Garden #Needs #Helping

War makes early risers of us all.
-- Julian Fellowes

#War

Lawyers are always confident before the verdict. It's only after that they share their doubts.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Doubt #Lawyer #Share

Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Player #Games #Ridiculous

You never know people, do you? You can work with 'em for twenty years; you don't know 'em at all.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Years #People #Twenties

Success means your thoughts are worthy of everyones consideration.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mean #Consideration #Worthy

Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Passion #Being In Love #Reality

Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”
-- Julian Fellowes

#Emotional #One Day #Noble

I think other people's depression is frightfully dreary, don't you?
-- Julian Fellowes

#Depression #Thinking #People

There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Drawing #Library

The business of life is learning that you can't lay down the terms.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Life Is #Term

I can be as contrary as I choose.
-- Julian Fellowes

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Bird #Missing #Sorrow

If there's one thing I don't look for in a maid, it's discretion. Except with my own secrets, of course.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Secret #Looks #Maids

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Memories #Past #People

One of the great injustices in fiction is that on the whole people with romantic yearnings have romantic faces. But in real life it's not always like that.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Real #People #Dating

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Life #Advice #Understanding

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Christmas #Character #Car

Today, people often make the American mistake of confusing acquaintances with friends. The former are there to share life's pleasures; only the latter should be invited to share one's problems.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Friends #Mistake #People

School visits are something I do fairly often: I always say to the students that somebody has got to end up with the interesting careers, so why not them?
-- Julian Fellowes

#Work #School #Careers

I always like to arrive at the airport early to enjoy breakfast and lounge about so that when I get on the plane all my travel fever has disappeared.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Airports #Fever #Breakfast

Maggie Smith has a unique sense of comedy, based on a somewhat ironic view of real life, making it both funnier and more sad. But perhaps her greatest ability, or at least the one that most intrigues me, is how she can convey deep and powerful emotion without a trace of sentimentality.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Powerful #Real #Unique

Education. Experience. Or are they the same thing?
-- Julian Fellowes

He's lived a fiction. And, of course, he thinks that if you love someone enough, they will love you. And that if you steer things enough, things will, under your control, come right. And this is the fiction of the controller: a controller thinks that they can control their life into being what they want it to be. But their life will never be what they want it to be until they stop controlling, and that is their journey.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Love You #Journey #Thinking

What you have to understand about period drama is that it's 'history light.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Drama #Light #Periods

Of course I love winning things; I can't tell you how much I enjoy it.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Winning #Enjoy

Nothing is harder to dramatize than happiness.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Harder

Ninety-eight per cent of actors who actually make a living do so in front of a camera.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Eight #Cameras #Actors

My mother converted to Catholicism to marry my father.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mother #Father #Catholicism

Most of us don't want to be outsiders.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Want #Outsiders

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Drama #Successful #People

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit
-- Julian Fellowes

#Substitutes #Wit #Vulgarity

What does she do?" "She's a producer." Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn't mean much more than "she's a member of the human race.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mean #Race #Doe

Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Three #Joining #Rooms

I mean the truth is, I've always been interested in the whole setup of the Old World.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mean #World #Truth Is

I love 'Sex and the City;' I think I've seen every episode.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Sex #Thinking #Cities

I just don't believe in generalisations.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Believe #Generalisation

I have fits of melancholia when I watch the news, but we all do, don't we?
-- Julian Fellowes

#Media #Watches #News

I have derived enormous confidence from being a husband and father.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Husband #Father #Husband And Father

I envy people who can think, 'No, I'm not going to work today' when they have a huge pile of deadlines stacking up.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #People #Envy

I always loved movies and the cinema; we always used to go to see films as a family.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Cinema #Film #Used

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Directors #Welcome #Members

A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience's sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Needs #Actors #Impossible

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mean #Thinking #People

You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.
-- Julian Fellowes

#America #Years #Three

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Lucky #Lasts #Moments

When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Siege #Desperate

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Book #Thinking #Reader

I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Television #World

I think Americans are wonderful film actors - the best in the world - but they are a very contemporary race and they look forward all the time.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Race #Looks

You are my whole existence and I will love you until my last breath.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Love You #Lasts #Existence

What is a week-end? Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Week #Maggie #Ends

When people are feeling insecure about their jobs and there are cuts to be made, it's hard to put up an argument that the film industry needs funding.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Jobs #Cutting #Insecure

The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: 'A funny little man asked me to marry him.'
-- Julian Fellowes

#Party #Men #Numbers

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Mother #Father #Parent

We live a life that is often spent in crowds - parties, festivals and first nights - so it's nice to avoid them.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Nice #Party #Night

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Country #Icons #House

Sometimes you watch one of your favorite shows from 20 years ago and you think, 'I'm loving this, but golly, it's going at the speed of a snail.'
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Years #Watches

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Views #People

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Successful #House #Childhood

If you're supposed to be a 'personality,' then you might as well have a personality.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Personality #Might #Wells

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Class #Unfair

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #People #Giving

I think every period - except for the 14th century, or something - has some merits.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Thinking #Merit #Century

Plenty of friendships are sustainable through dinners and lunches, but will not stand a week away. So be careful with whom you go on holiday.
-- Julian Fellowes

#Holiday #Lunch #Goes On