Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.

If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

Any woman who marries an Italian must accept the undeniable fact that she has also married his mother.

I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.

It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.