I took my sight and mobility for granted.

Will you lie to me and promise to read them? Books need to be read. The pages need to be turned.

Yes, I hate it when people call me a 'national treasure'. It takes away your bite and makes you feel like a harmless old golden Labrador.

Love is the only thing that keeps me sane.

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house.

Most social problems could be helped or prevented if people had more money and practical advice.

I don't know why women are so mad about flowers. Personally, they leave me cold. I prefer trees.

Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.

There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.

I think we take it for granted that if you are with your husband after 30 years, then he is the love of your life.

I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.

School is a hospital where people recover from ignorance

One must never look for happiness: one meets it by the way.

I think Hillary Clinton is right. I think it isn't enough to leave [Bashir] Assad in place, because as long as he is there, there is going to be a recruiting magnet for ISIS.

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.

Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.

Society cannot but depend to a disproportionate degree on its capable few to develop and flourish.

The fool is like those people who think themselves rich with little.

To get a better piece of chicken, you'd have to be a rooster.

There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.