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

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 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.

Whenever I write a paragraph in English, I first check it with the Google Translator, and most often it says no language detected.

Life is an illusion that last too little.

I was never encouraged to do it and I played the accordion, which I hated. I wish I had taken piano because I definitely would have written more songs of my own, but I didn't.

If there were 1,000 ways to God we would want 1,001.

We're not mad at God, just like atheists don't hate Santa or Unicorns, they're just not there!

Customs represent the experience of mankind.

You are only limited to what you push yourself to, you know? You can always get better.

Golf: The most ... perfect expression of National Stupidity.

I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.

As long as you like me the best. And you think I’m good-looking—sort of. I’m prepared to be annoyingly persistent.