I remember watching myself on video and being so disappointed with myself because I was constantly moving around the place and laughing. I thought, 'I must be so much louder than I think I am. From inside it feels fine.'
You can't lay down laws for what people think and hope.
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.
On the first day of school, my father told me I'd be the most popular girl and everyone would love me and want to be my friend. It wasn't so, but it gave me an enormous amount of confidence.
I'm a great will maker. I've made my will every year since I was 21.
I couldn't have children, so that's the bad side. But compared to everything else I have, it's not all that terribly bad. I count my winners rather than my losers.
You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.
Of course, I should have done what doctors said and walked for miles every day and not eaten great amounts of butter. But then, life is life, and if we all did what they said we should do, it would be a different world.
Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.
An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.
I have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good education, I enjoyed working as a teacher, journalist and author. I have loved a wonderful man for over 33 years, and I believe he loves me, too.
I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.
I've had a good life, full of more success and happiness than I ever expected.
I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure pills, too, but no vitamins or supplements.
I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you're not going to read 'King Lear.'
Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.
Of course I wanted children. Bright, gorgeous, loving children. I could almost see them.
I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint - a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.
After my hip operation, I had to cut out butter, which I loved, and salt. I no longer eat desserts with lots of cream, and I've cut right back on alcohol.
My brother married young, and his is the best marriage I know.
I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake.
The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.
My mother was a trained nurse, and she'd tell me that patients would fight as they were administered anaesthetic, grappling to get the gas mask off their face.
When my sister Joan arrived, I asked if I could swap her for a rabbit. When I think what a marvellous friend she's been, I'm so glad my parents didn't take me at my word.
The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren't as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young.
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