Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.

A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.

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.

Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.

A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.

A therapist might suggest my generosity is a way of buying affection. But buying people's love has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I don't want their love.

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

As I have got older, I have found myself making friends with the ease and swiftness that other people pick up fuzzballs on their jumpers. And I believe it is probably my lack of longing for 'The One' that makes me so popular.

As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.

As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.

As a militant troublemaker, I once wrote that it was the duty of every woman worthy of the description to upset men at least three times a day, on principle.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.

Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.

Being a monarchist, and fawning over those 'above' you, you must naturally despise those 'below' or on the same socioeconomic level as yourself, because that is how hierarchy worship works.

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

But just think what a boring, bread-and-milk world this would be without the boastful.

Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.

Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing £20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough.

Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.

Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense.

Having 'best friends' is - at least for me - as outdated and small-minded a concept as the idea of 'Sunday best clothes.'

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.

I almost choke on my popcorn when I hear film stars, who walk on red carpets as much as the rest of us do on zebra crossings, criticising youngsters who crave fame.

I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.

I am not one of those fat birds who feels miserable because models are thin. Frankly, I feel more insulted by the idea that unless I see other fat birds in fashion magazines, I will be reduced to a sniveling wreck of a human being.

I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.

I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.

I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.

I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.

I just have a real problem with people who seek to portray fatness or thinness as moral concepts.

I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.

Is the raggle-taggle Brangelina tribe any more bogus than that of the landlocked yummy mummy who believes that she can drop half a dozen brats and still keep a modest carbon footprint? I don't think so.

It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.