As I have got older, I have become easier on myself. It's about realising things can't be perfect.

I read, I gossip, I do crosswords. I think chatting with friends is relaxing. I've picked them up all through my life - if you live long enough, you end up with quite a large circle.

I'm childish and silly. Most people tease me because I'm a bit daft.

My centre of who I thought I was was never very consciously about being beautiful or attractive - I think I'm one of those people who's actually grown into their looks.

I lived with my mother all my life until she died, and I don't really think I knew her, because I was always using her as my mother, if you know what I mean.

I was not emotionally mature enough to accept any kind of success when I was young. I needed to go that long route.

I came up almost completely through the subsidised theatre. I have never been absolutely at the market interface, where I've got to sell my wares or die - I've always been protected from that.

As long as I am still interested and curious I enjoy getting up in the morning, but I can't say I have a happy smile on my face 24/7.

As long as I am still interested and curious, I enjoy getting up in the morning, but I can't say I have a happy smile on my face 24/7.

But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.

I have never had the lust to meet famous authors

If you're a writer, you're always working.

There have always been readers throughout history who have been drawn to villains.

All our afflictions, all our temptations are to make heaven more desirable, and earth more loathsome.

It's like a dream come true. When somebody is paying you to talk about yourself, you've won.

Joys do not stay, but take wing and fly away.

If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.

To kill [children in the womb] makes us all the poorer, insensitive, calloused and jaded.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.