I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

Yes - I am usually overweight. I have had to be interested in diet because of being diabetic for 30 years and having kidney failure.

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house.

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.

Barry Kent's father looks like a big ape and has got more hair on the back of his hands than my father has got on his entire head.

I have decided to keep a full journal, in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down.

It's no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots.