I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.

I didn't get excited by weight loss, and since I was already happy being fat, I couldn't see the point of it all. I'm 6 ft. and weigh about 18 st. or 19 st., but weighing myself is not something I do with much pleasure.

She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren't ready then, they were now.

You say to yourself: 'What could people, in all these countries, find in my books?' and yet I think we're all the same, anywhere. Everybody is a hero or a dramatic person in their own story if you just know where to look.

I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.