I haven't got a waist. I've just got a sort of place ... a bit like an unmarked level crossing.

I've never understood the point of ecstasy. I think if I wanted to get dehydrated and jump about with a load of people I've never met before I could go to a Methodist barn dance.

Jogging is for people who aren't intelligent enough to watch television.

I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don't know who got my moped, but I drove that Peugeot for years.

I know I've got a degree. Why does that mean I have to spend my life with intellectuals? I've got a lifesaving certificate but I don't spend my evenings diving for a rubber brick with my pyjamas on.

Life's not fair, is it? Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.

All my friends started getting boyfriends, but I didn't want a boyfriend, I wanted a thirteen-colour biro.

On a train, why do I always end up sitting next to the woman who's eating the individual fruit pie by sucking the filling out through the hole in the middle?

I can remember when pants were pants. You wore them for twenty years, then you cut them down for pan scrubs. Or quilts.

In Russia, show the least athletic aptitude and they've got you dangling off the parallel bars with a leotard full of hormones.

A man is designed to walk three miles in the rain to phone for help when the car breaks down - and a woman is designed to say, 'you took your time' when he comes back dripping wet.

I'm an example of why people deserve second chances.

In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.

We often are consoled by our want of reason for misfortunes that reason could not have comforted.

I have a different purpose in writing each novel. Some of them seem more similar than others, but the purposes are always different.

I have a theory that self-made, first-generation actresses don't feel entitled to success.

I approach every problem with optimism.

I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better.

No one could be still like Edward.

I do not think about absent persons as often or with such intense longing as I think of places. They lie one below the other in my mind.

And Brooke Elliott is a great actress.