Julian Fellowes Quotes & Sayings

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

Constance: Tell me, what happened to William's little maid? I never saw her again after that dinner.
Mary Maceachran: Elsie?
She's gone.
Constance: Oh, it's a pity, really. I thought it was a good idea to have someone in the house who is actually sorry he's dead. — Julian Fellowes

Their pretensions are naked and vulnerable and for that reason, to me at least, rather charming. — Julian Fellowes

Maybe, much later in life, some sensible considerations might play a part in deciding whether to commit your heart to another, but when you're young you simply select people you are physically attracted to, and then invest them with all sorts of qualities which they probably don't possess. Or, if they do, it is completely coincidental. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

Is my gardener's pride to be sacrificed on the altar of Mr Molesley's ambitions?
- The Dowager Countess(Maggie Smith) — Julian Fellowes

Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: What about Claudette Colbert? She's British, isn't she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British? — Julian Fellowes

Nothing is harder to dramatize than happiness. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

To an outsider it seems a vital ingredient of many marriages that each partner should support the illusions of the other. — Julian Fellowes

Anne Trenchard was a practical woman, and one of her chief virtues was that she did not linger over a disaster but sought, almost immediately, to remedy what could be remedied and to accept what could not. — Julian Fellowes

Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success, and nothing else, to be of lasting value. The burdensome obligation imposed on all its inhabitants is therefore to present themselves as successes, because otherwise they forfeit their right to respect in that environment ... There is no place in that town for the "interesting failure" or for anyone who is not determined on a life that will be shaped in a upward-heading curve. — Julian Fellowes

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

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it. — Julian Fellowes

I come from a class which used to be called the gentry - which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class. — Julian Fellowes

It was possible for couples to not discover that they are in profound disagreement over the very fundamentals of life until ten or twenty years of marriage. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

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

The longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially. — Julian Fellowes

As a rule the Holloywood pattern for English actors is simple. They are delighted to go, they are told there is a lot of work for them if they stick it out, they tell everyone how fabulous it is, they spend all their money - and then they come home. It seems to take from two to six years. — Julian Fellowes

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

He was one of those who manage to combine almost total failure with breathtaking arrogance — Julian Fellowes

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

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

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. — 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

When grief is becoming, it is also suspect. — Julian Fellowes

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

The fact that someone is not particularly intelligent is no guide in these things. People may be stupid and extremely complicated just as they can be clever and incapable of deep feeling. — Julian Fellowes

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit — Julian Fellowes

Henry Denton: You Brits really don't have a sense of humor do you?
Elsie: We do if something's funny, sir. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

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

The great houses of Britain have, for centuries, been the guardians of much of our history, not just of the families who built and lived in them, but of the people who worked there, of the local area, of all of us. — Julian Fellowes

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

To be honest, when you're running a series and you have an open end, you don't want to limit yourself too much with the choices you've got for a particular character. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

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

This phenomenon, where the losers of a revolution try to demonstrate their support for, and approval of, the changes that have destroyed them, always fascinates me. — Julian Fellowes

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

Bought marmalade? Oh dear, I call that very feeble. — Julian Fellowes

Sybil, vulgarity is no substitute for wit. — Julian Fellowes

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

When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you've got to have a gut understanding of your material. — Julian Fellowes

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

moment that the parents of one's friends choose to die or go to — Julian Fellowes

I like people who don't accept boundaries. Like Florence Nightingale. And Napoleon or Louis XIV, though I'm not sure how much I'd have liked to meet them. I admire people who aren't circumscribed by circumstance. — Julian Fellowes

The '20s are a very interesting period to me. — Julian Fellowes

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

I think the reason why people love 'Downton Abbey' is because all the characters are given the same weight. Some are nice, some are not, but it has nothing to do with class or oppressors versus the oppressed. — Julian Fellowes

I think America has dealt with - I mean, this is simplistic, and of course I don't live in America - but the impression I get is that there is not a kind of obligation to dislike those who are better off or be frightened of those who are worse off. — Julian Fellowes

Love is like riding or speaking French. If you don't learn it young, it's hard to get the trick of it later. — Julian Fellowes

If you're in the movie or in television, your failures are very public, and so are your successes. You weigh them up against each other, really. — Julian Fellowes

You know, I'm not a revolutionary. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

Well, you've got to be known for something. The danger of extreme versatility is that you don't spring to mind for anything. — Julian Fellowes

When I was young, men like my father would often come home and put on their smoking jacket over their perfectly ordinary trousers, as a way of relaxing in the evening. — Julian Fellowes

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

CLARKSON: Are you fond of babies? VIOLET: Of course. CLARKSON: What's your favourite age? VIOLET: About sixteen. — Julian Fellowes

The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies. — Julian Fellowes

There is almost nothing in your house that does not tell something about you. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

We all have chapters we would prefer unpublished. — Julian Fellowes

The freedom of growing older is that one is no longer obliged to dislike someone simply because they dislike you. — Julian Fellowes

What I dislike about movie culture is that it often presents a parable of our problems - but the issues are all straightforward and the people are either nice or they're not. In real life, everyone falls between those perimeters, but not many American films operate in that grey area. — Julian Fellowes

Why do we spend so much of our lives making blameless people unhappy? — Julian Fellowes

War makes early risers of us all. — Julian Fellowes

What the Americans want to see is life in their drama. Life of all sorts: hard lives, easy lives, or lives which, like most of ours, are a mixture of the two. — Julian Fellowes

I would fight dragons, I would walk over flaming coals, I would enter the Valley of the Dead, if I thought I might have a chance of your heart. — Julian Fellowes

When young and clever men are angry, they either explode or achieve great things. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future. — Julian Fellowes

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

The couple that never talk to each other never discover how little they have in common. — Julian Fellowes

I don't seem to have ever had a plan, but I have always been quite good at walking through doors when they are opened. I am never any good at anticipating what will happen next, but I always go for it when it does. — Julian Fellowes

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

Nor should they be, but everyone needs to feel they're part of something worthwhile. That, in the last analysis, their life has some meaning in a larger context. The questions is what am I part of? What have I done? — Julian Fellowes

it is better to be gullible than suspicious. — Julian Fellowes

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

She was at that period of her life that almost everyone must pass through, when childhood is done with and a faux maturity, untrammeled by experience, gives one a sense that anything is possible until the arrival of real adulthood proves conclusively that it is not. — Julian Fellowes

I think it's always a challenge to adapt something from one medium to another - a novel into a film or a play into a movie or whatever. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

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

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

Very few Englishmen ever ask a woman anything about themselves. They choose instead to lecture their dinner neighbors on a new and better route to the M5, or to praise their own professional achievements. So is a man does express any curiosity about a woman sitting next to him, about her feelings, about the life she is leading, she will generally tell him anything he cares to know. — Julian Fellowes

I'm not romantic. But I shall think that the heart has other uses, rather than just pumping blood. — Julian Fellowes

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

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

What's difficult for American audiences is that they're used to a system here where you can get an actor for five years or even seven, and that is signed for at the audition. Whereas in England, no agent will give you an actor for more than three years. — Julian Fellowes

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

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