Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.

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 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.

Seek to be the smartest in a room, not the loudest.

I'm sad now, the way we're talking is infinitely sad: faded music, faded paper flowers, worn satin, an echo of an echo. All gone away, no longer possible.

Let's run the experiment.

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.

It's the same in real life: Notorious murderers get off scot-free and live happily all their lives, while good people die - sometimes the very best people. That's the way of the world.

True courage comes not just from feeling confident and strong, but from being the honest, authentic expression in yourself. Think about how audacious it is to really believe in yourself.

Ah, if I could realize, if I could forget myself and devote my meditations to the freeing, the awakening and the blessedness of all living creatures everywhere I'd realize what there is, is ecstasy.

Nobody has a bigger cult than Warren Buffett.

Don't wait until you're in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.

A reversal is just anything that's a surprise. It's a way of keeping the audience interested.