I don't think any woman in power really has a happy life unless she's got a large number of women friends ... because you sometimes must go and sit down and let down your hair with someone you can trust totally.

In order to unscramble some eggs the leader gotta have some balls

I hate feminism. It is poison.

They are all a rotten lot. Schmidt and the Americans and we are the only people who would do any standing up and fighting if necessary.

It is not the business of politicians to please everyone.

I suppose I was about 20, and a crowd of us had been to a village hop and came back to make midnight cups of coffee. I was in the kitchen helping to dish up and having a fierce argument with one of the boys in the crowd when someone else interrupted to say: 'Of course Margaret, you will go into politics won't you?' I stopped dead. Suddenly it was crystalised for me. I knew.

I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on (Ronald Reagan's) words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: 'Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.' Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.