I just want a quiet life. I think that's what everybody says when they get older.

Be yourself - it's the inner beauty that counts. You are your own best friend, the key to your own happiness, and as soon as you understand that - and it takes a few heartbreaks - you can be happy.

It's a bit of a headache being a perfectionist. You're never satisfied.

To keep my back from getting stiff, I have a strict regime every morning of stretching and do yoga once a week and Pilates. 'Strictly Come Dancing' in 2008 was great for my fitness.

War is good for absolutely nothing, because no matter how far and wide apart we may live, we're all the same under the skin. We all want to live, laugh and love.

I'm a romantic and will only marry for love where there's respect and compatibility. I'd like to be with someone if the right person came along. I really like male company. I like the male mind.

With age comes a greater wisdom, an ease and comfort with oneself.

I have done so many love scenes in the past that I have learned how to pull off a sexy smoulder on the dance floor.

I've never felt the need to be defined by a man.

I am simply not such a slave to my vanity, and I don't want to be, because as you get older you really have to start accepting the inevitable.

Sadly, the timing's never been right. There have been men who would have married me but I didn't feel the same, and vice versa.

My mother was informing me, by mail, that she was about to die, and would never see me again.

A writer's life is never boring when you have imaginary friends to play with!

There are elements of intrinsic beauty in the simplification of a house built on the log cabin idea.

We know of fishing vessels that carry up to twelve different flags on board, and they re-flag their ship at sea,.

Remember that work is not a place for self-fulfillment. If it were, you would know it.

Is it just me or does the fact that you live in the same building you were abducted into seem a bit morbid?" "Pffft. It’s just you," I said, discounting the entire bizarre ghoulish thing.

Education is a nation's cheapest defence

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

I've always wanted to be the biggest real estate man to come down the pike.

You get a taste here in New Orleans that you don't get anywhere else in the country.