Sue Townsend

Sometimes I rant, in a comical way, about how the gods give with one hand and take with the other.

I take life very seriously. I can laugh at it, because what else can you do? But it's a hard daily battle.

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.

I prefer to keep my secrets to myself, to the grave... and beyond!

I'm spectacularly disorganised. I wrote my latest book in seven different notebooks scattered throughout my house.

Yes - I am usually overweight. I have had to be interested in diet because of being diabetic for 30 years and having kidney failure.

Being poor with three small children is terrifying. You can't make any plans. You know you're not going on holiday, ever. There's no way you could ever afford driving lessons or a car. And the guilt I used to feel: they had holes in their shoes, and at one point, I had to send them to school wearing Wellingtons when the sun was shining.

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

Live with all of your senses.

I am surrounded by counselors. My sister is a counselor. My daughter is training to be a counselor. A lot of my friends are counselors.

Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.

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'm getting to the end of my magnifying glasses now. One eye's gone completely. The other is gradually dimming. Dimming - that sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? I'm so lucky. I can still make a living - and the same kind of living.

I'd love a day devoid of responsibilities. I've often thought about going to a hotel just to have a day away from everything.

I took my sight and mobility for granted.

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.

When all my kids were at home, I used to write from midnight onwards.

We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could.

I am the world's worst diabetic.

'The Gambler' by Dostoevsky. It was the first time I realised that it was possible to have good and evil in one person. It led me to read a lot of Russian literature.

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.

When I was a child, I dreaded blindness. We used to ask: 'Would we rather be blind or deaf?' I said I'd rather be blind, even though I was scared of it. I couldn't bear not being able to hear music or talk to people.

My second husband encouraged me to go to a writing group at our local theatre. It was my 'coming out of the closet' moment.

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.

Watching 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' is my guilty pleasure.

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.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.