As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.

Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.

The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.

Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.

Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.

My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger.

When you care more about what others think of you than what God knows about you, you've lost perspective on what really matters.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

I think I've gotten and developed tremendous relationships throughout the world with the leaders.

Some of our writers are starting to incorporate elements of social media, etc. in the work itself, which is all for the good, I think - finding new ways of being poetic.

You've got to keep the stage world and your real world separated or you're headed for trouble.

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance.

I do think I know more about clothes than any 500 designers, because there's nothing like wearing them. You buy them, you study them, and you start to understand how they're crafted.