In actual life I am a grumpy old bag.

I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first.

Turn up your radio. Watch lots of telly and eat loads of choc. Feel guilty. Stay up all night. Learn everything in six hours that has taken you two years to compile. That's how I did it.

I am not, I repeat, NOT a lesbian - even though I'd like to be one when I grow up.

If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush.

It was my father who taught me to value myself. He told me that I was uncommonly beautiful and that I was the most precious thing in his life.

The person I have admired the most in comedy terms would be Eric Morecambe, who is my total hero.

I never do any television without chocolate. That's my motto and I live by it. Quite often I write the scripts and I make sure there are chocolate scenes. Actually I'm a bit of a chocolate tart and will eat anything. It's amazing I'm so slim.

It was fantastic to work in Cornwall partly because my family live there so I was able to do lots of visiting and eat lots of cake. They live all over Cornwall and all over Devon.

I want to do something where I play Judi Dench's younger sister or daughter.

I'd like to play a horse, many people think I already have. Either end of the horse would be fine.

I keep my own personality in a cupboard under the stairs at home so that no one else can see it or nick it.

In actual life I am a grumpy old bag.

We have to do a film parody for Comic Relief. We can't decide which film to parody at the moment. Any ideas welcome, but not Spiderman owing to costume being too tight.

Evolving into a middle-aged person is quite interesting if we can understand what it means. I would like to think it meant being a bit sure of what I want.

I am a kid in the dressing-up box at heart.

I am a rubbish flirt.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

I love it when somebody makes me laugh - it's what attracts me to people.

I'll always be a fat girl and I am happy with that.

I'm not a big drinking person and hardly ever have alcohol. Perhaps it's not sweet enough for my sweet tooth.

I've chosen to stay in a jolly place for most of my life, and that is a lot of who I am.

I've never disliked myself, and my weight has had nothing to do with my self-esteem.

I've often said the most difficult things I have to say to people through humour. I can very quickly put someone in their place with it. But we all walk away unscathed because there's been some funnies around it, and I'll usually make sure that it comes back at me.

My best friend is the most important girl, outside of family, to me. I met her when I went to college and we bonded immediately. I'd do anything for her at any time. We phone each other every day.

That's the awful thing about dating. Tight underwear. We would all like to be in a big bra and pants and when you are in a secure relationship you can do that.

That's the weird thing about not being married - you can't get regular kissing; you can't be guaranteed of it, and that's a great shame.

The theatre is one of those muscles - if you don't exercise it, it becomes a strange and truly fearful place.

Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.