Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.

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.

It seemed sensible to move to a market town where I could walk everywhere.

A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, 'Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire,' and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.

I was sent to a finishing school, which didn't last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I 'came out' before going to a domestic science school.

Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in battle.

Each marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write.

In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it's a lot of fun!

Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.

My first husband would never make up his mind in less than five years, so I used to get him to think that whatever course of action needed to be taken was his idea. Then he'd go right ahead.

We all lie to each other, present some sort of front.

Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.

They may turn out to be a great disappointment, or perhaps they may be full of enchanting surprises.

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.

I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse.

People try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier.

Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.

It was pretty awful for us children because we never really knew the local children. Mother was keen for us to learn languages, so our travels took us to France and Italy, as well as the West Country.

I have a garden, and I'm passionately interested in young people.

I found out only recently that we were making an index of enemy code signs.

Rebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.

You know what it's like to persuade a pigheaded child to do something they don't want to. If they hear the same suggestion from someone else, they'll go right off and do it.

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.

I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldn't have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.

I don't write for any particular kind of person.

Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.

We assume that celebrities have it easy and so love to watch them having to endure a bit of hardship.

I love Nautilus and stretching. The results are immediate, and that gives me the motivation to continue.

I am a ordinary teenager. I fall in love like everyone else.

I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

My goal is, of course, for this show to do well, and I would love it if people liked it.

I love living on that stage. Without that, I'd die.

I love my DSL, but I love my WiFi more. And I probably get on the Internet 40 percent to 50 percent more because of the combination of those technologies.

But I love New York. I used to set my alarm clock when I was there, and get up at 4am and get a coffee, just because I could.

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

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

There is love there. And then there's times when I can't even stomach Simon. You don't have to sit next to him. That's all I have to say.