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" Lack of confidence - every time I start a new piece of work, it seems I have to spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it. "

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" My second husband encouraged me to go to a writing group at our local theatre. It was my 'coming out of the closet' moment. "

" I always write back to people who are kind enough to write to me. Actually, I don't write - I recline on my red velvet sofa with my feet on the coffee table and dictate the letters to my eldest son. "

" I always feel as if I'm a disappointment: that people want a grand dame in furs like Barbara Taylor Bradford. "

" Most social problems could be helped or prevented if people had more money and practical advice. "

" I think we take it for granted that if you are with your husband after 30 years, then he is the love of your life. "

" I take life very seriously. I can laugh at it, because what else can you do? But it's a hard daily battle. "

" I have a slight addiction to Diet Coke, and, of course, I absolutely shouldn't touch it because it makes the kidneys work really hard. "

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

" I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.' "

" I do think that books, good books, free you. They make you feel a citizen of the world and things like class, sex and age don't matter. They're the greatest leveler. "

" I don't like to be noticed. The older I've got, the more reclusive I've become. I've got late-onset shyness. People are lovely. When they see me in the street, they don't ask for anything from me. They just say: 'I thought it was you, and I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your books,' but I can't seem to cope with it anymore. "

" When I was a child, I dreaded blindness. We used to ask: 'Would we rather be blind or deaf?' I said I'd rather be blind, even though I was scared of it. I couldn't bear not being able to hear music or talk to people. "

" In the early days, it was, you know, I used to weep while I was writing. I used to grab at any kind of anything, any hint, any tip of how to make it easy. "

" We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could. "

" I prefer to keep my secrets to myself, to the grave... and beyond! "

" I used to think I had nice arms, but I don't even think that anymore. "

" Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it. "

" 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. "

" Watching 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' is my guilty pleasure. "

" My cream and black Aga. It is the heart of the house, and people congregate around it. "

" Sometimes I rant, in a comical way, about how the gods give with one hand and take with the other. "

" When all my kids were at home, I used to write from midnight onwards. "

" I must have been a very strange child. I was very pretentious. Like Adrian Mole. "

" People down on their luck deserve the best: beautiful surroundings and well-paid professional staff to help them out of their difficulties. Why not train thousands more social workers and let them sit in on claimants' interviews? "

" I usually listen to the same thing over and over again: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. And Leonard Cohen. "

" I took my sight and mobility for granted. "

" I seem to be able to get depressed quite easily without any reason. "

" Yes, I hate it when people call me a 'national treasure'. It takes away your bite and makes you feel like a harmless old golden Labrador. "

" I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them. "