Benedict Cumberbatch is very beautiful.

The word barren tells you everything you need to know...The word spinster tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry... Imagine if you saw George Clooney on the cover of a magazine every week with, is George broody? Is George going to adopt a baby? When is George going to have another kid? It would just seem weird. We'd seem demented, yet it's totally valid for women.

If you're not a confident person, pretend to be one.

When you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.

When I talk to girls, they go, 'I'm not a feminist.' And I say: 'What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations : you are a feminist.'

A majority of women's magazines feature women who do amazing things, but then the article focuses on how she ruined it with her shoes.

In the end I want to spend my 60s writing bonkbusters like Jilly Cooper.