The money I've earned has enabled me to keep my life in my own hands. I had a terrific body, and I got paid for using it.

I was friends with Salvador Dalí until the day he died. Lucky me. I can't say why. I didn't live to be noticed, I lived to enjoy the excitement of doing right that day, and I knew I was doing it right when they would have me back. That was the thrill for me. I yearned to be validated because my mother was stern and I never did much right, that's how I perceived it.

If your ceiling is falling down, don't you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself.

I'm a working woman of 80 trying to work out what the image I can project is. How I can do it with, you know, dignity.

My life has been amazing. How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen's card was taken by Norman Parkinson?

I didn't marry to have children. I married to have a relationship, and I was blessed with one child. I was an only child, too - my mother was smarter than most women today; she just had me.

I'm doing the best I can with the ravages of time on my body and I'm a work in progress. I can't write a memoir because I can't do it this week or next week... I try to be an inspiration to the young to respect their older people; we can't stay the same, but we do the best we can with what's left. You can't whine about stuff, you have to learn to eat humble pie along the way and keep going, because the alternative is going to happen.