Presley sounded like Jayne Mansfield looked - blowsy and loud and low.

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.

If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn't be so damn ineffable.

I did not lose myself all at once.

That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

Brazil will change when its cities change.

Women don't get the same opportunities that men get in racing, so they don't get to learn race craft.

My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.

Routine is part of coping.

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.

I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you.

It was hard to get guys to notice me, period, because I was so skinny and all my friends were curvy. Plus, I used to be very nervous in front of guys.