I wrote my earliest piece for The Sunday Times about being a young wife.

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no.

I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple: drink in different pubs to your other half.

My own parents loved each other very much.

It must be a terrible pressure to have to go to the office.

I live at home and, if I want to start work at 11 o'clock, I can.

I'm basically a very happy person and I don't have to be anybody else.

I love the long grass coming up to meet the willows.

There is nothing more attractive than a man who is not a New Man.

Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake all afternoon.

I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969.

I think it bespeaks a generous nature, a man who can cook.

You've simply got to go on and on with your family and friends and tell them how much you love them because you never know whether they'll be there tomorrow, do you?

And I would really like to be a grandmother, but only when Felix or Emily meet the right person and are ready.

I wrote my earliest piece for The Sunday Times about being a young wife.

The bank told us we ought to sell this house to pay off our overdraft. Riders saved the day. I was so pleased when it got to number one, I went all around the fields crying and crying.

I'd never have written the big books in London.

At home I have big vats of cabbage soup that I make to slim down.

If you look across the valley, you can see exactly what I mean: about four beautiful houses, and you think something is happening in each of them. It's like a mural.

But really I'm not terribly interested in what I eat.

I would really like to spend more time with the family. Every time I go abroad I miss them all dreadfully.

I've got a book coming out soon so I just must get some weight off.

But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd better write a novel, so I tend not to stop and learn word processing.

Leo, sadly, has Parkinson's, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.

The only thing a whirlwind courtship does is blow dust in everyones eyes.

The male - I have found - is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.

For me, being in front of the camera and training go hand in hand.

I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.