All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.

I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.

I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

We think to dance, and dance in thought. But to hibernate in the mind, is to bring upon us an apocalypse of the Soul.

Order and simplification are the first steps towards mastery of a subject

I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.

Wonder Showzen was one of the first shows that realized each sketch, each segment is essentially one joke, and, once you know what the joke is, it's time to move on.

I'm always shy when I meet people I admire so I wouldn't be able to say anything rather than, 'How do you do? Love you! Bye!'

There’s something brittle in me that will break before it bends.

You have to get rid of characters to make room for new ones, but you also have to recognize when things are done.

Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.

Whether you like it or not, learn to love it, because its the best thing going. Wooooo!