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.

8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.

I lost one woman I loved. I'm not losing another.

You guard your hopes and pocket your dreams, you'd trade it all to avoid an unpleasant scene.

I'm working as hard as I can to get my life and my cash to run out at the same time. If I can just die after lunch Tuesday, everything would be perfect.

At seventeen I'm waiting for my life to actually begin. I'm afraid I'll wake up tomorrow eighty years old and I WILL STILL BE WAITING.

Do you like to eat things? -I love eating. I list it as a hobby.

Let no one be ashamed to say yes today if yesterday he said no. Or to say no today if yesterday he said yes. For that is life. Never to have changed-what a pitiable thing of which to boast!

I've always thought the law ought to put on spectacles, it has mighty poor eyesight once in a while.

I have always loved lipstick. For women, that love comes from our mother and grandmothers. It's so natural for a woman to open up her mirror and apply lipstick

I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.

The flight I'm most excited about is the one that takes me back to Northern Ireland to visit family and friends.