When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.

If you've been fat, you will always feel and see the world as a fat person; you know how difficult it is... It's the same coming from a working-class background... it never leaves you.

And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

I say this in the spirit of feminist encouragement, but I think I'm pretty hot. I've got all the facial features, facing the right way, at the right end, and you can always paint over the bad bits with makeup.

I don't regret not going to college. Students learn up to the age of 21, then stop. I'll always be learning - the things that really matter in life. How to sign on, how to get free food, how to be streetwise.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.

Always remember that, nine times out of ten, you probably aren’t having a full-on nervous breakdown – you just need a cup of tea and a biscuit. You’d be amazed how easily and repeatedly you can confuse the two. Get a big biscuit tin.