Mariella Frostrup Quotes
Joy acts like a trampoline, everything that touches it bouncing right back off it.
I was told that when you hit forty men stop looking at you. It's true, until you slip on a mini-skirt.
In romance we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner's foibles in intimate detail; in friendship we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.
Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in, external situations cause internal friction, you grow apart and then bounce back together.
Life is rife with frustrations, jealousies and, on occasion, an overwhelming sense of its injustices, but it's a big mistake to let such negative sentiments rule our lives and dictate choices.
I wasn't allowed to be clever when I was young and blonde, but now I am 50 and an old blonde, I am allowed to have gravitas. With wrinkles comes wisdom.
Like cars, every relationship requires a bit of an occasional service, and fine-tuning should be compulsory.
For most of us, when our 'dreams' - I use the word with reservations - came true, and marriage and motherhood became a reality, the romcoms, like horoscopes, swiftly lost their allure.
Far too many girls' and women's romantic relationships are formed around a negation of their own worth and attributes rather than a confirmation of them.
Since so many romantic comedies vary little in their storyline, the success or failure of such movies depends largely on whether we believe in the relationship of the protagonists.
Seeing the world differently is one of the toughest incompatibilities to reconcile in a relationship.
Too often we forget that an ideal partner is someone who enhances an already full existence.
There are more than enough people with serious mental issues who really do need professional help without all the other Toms, Dicks and Harriets rushing to the therapist's couch.
When the going gets tough, the prospect of delegating half your responsibilities to a willing volunteer, either to play a supporting role or take over the breadwinning, certainly holds allure.
As a species, we tend to be doers, forever shaping and reshaping the world to better suit our purposes.
Only those with skin as thick as elephant hide can hope to sail through their teens unscathed by self-doubt and bouts of depression.
It's so much easier to count our disadvantages than tot up the mitigating circumstances that generally outweigh the despair.
The great advantage of being human is that we can employ rational thought and resolve to change our circumstances.
Reading a book you are not enjoying is a torture not to be undertaken without a reward. I leave plays at the interval, too!
With longer life spans and better health and education, many feel that giving birth to a baby a mere couple of decades after they themselves were in the cradle is a little premature.
In the city, I wake bolt upright in the small hours, convinced that intruders are marauding through our apartment despite Swiss bank-style security arrangements.
I hate the thought of my children being glued to a screen. Children only play on computers all day because their parents let them.
I have a very childish attitude to books - a very non-analytic enthusiasm... like Alice falling down the chute.
Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in external situations cause internal friction you grow apart and then bounce back together.
I've been accused of riding roughshod over others' emotions, and I admit, when I feel a friend is being over-indulgent, my patience is in short supply.
For many young women, the dream of independence and a home of their own is a tantalising goal, while a lifetime devoted solely to catering for another person's needs would be hard to countenance.
I recognise my old self in a lot of the letters I get from single women who are unrealistic about what they want.
I met Jason on a charity walk in 2001, and we got married on a friend's boat in Panama two years later. It was the perfect wedding for two people who'd already been married and who weren't teenagers.
Girls have a tendency to take responsibility for romantic misinterpretations, when often it's men whose perfectly honed emotional inscrutability makes life more complicated than it should be.
Mixed messages are just part and parcel of the romantic terrain, and rather than berate yourself for any crossed wires, you'd do better to work on your future resilience.
The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.