I live in Ireland near the sea, only one mile from where I grew up - that's good, since I've known many of my neighbours for between 50-60 years. Gordon and I play chess every day, and we are both equally bad. We play chatty, over-talkative bad bridge with friends every week.

I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful marriage. I feel very lucky.

My brother married young, and his is the best marriage I know.

In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that's me!

Nobody ever wins by the cavalry coming to rescue you. It isn't a question of you're happy if you get married, or you get thin, or you get rich, because I've known lots of thin, rich, married people who are absolutely miserable.

In my books, there is no 'ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan' syndrome because if you look at the Hansel and Gretel syndrome, it was a mistake. It wasn't a duckling, it was a cygnet, and that's why it turned into a swan. The duckling should with any luck turn into a nice clucking duck and get on with its life. Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!

I didn't have a sweet tooth, but I liked butter, and I liked sauces, and I liked wine... and curry... and cheeses.

I was just lucky I lived in this time of mass-market paperbacks.

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.

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

When I was teaching Latin in girls' schools before I became a writer, I didn't much like it if parents would come in and say, 'We'll have less of the Ovid and Virgil and more of the grammar, please.' After all, I was the one in charge. That's how I feel about doctors. You should trust them to do their job properly.

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.'

If you're going on a plane journey, you're more likely to take one of my stories than 'Finnegan's Wake.'

I think you've got to play the hand that you're dealt and stop wishing for another hand.

I was fat, and that was awful because when you're young and sensitive, you think the world is over because you're fat.

I'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation.

We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing.

If you woke up each morning, and immediately dwelt on your ills, what sort of a day could you look forward to?

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

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 never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents that I was still alive and well fed and having a great time. They thought these letters were brilliant and sent them to a newspaper. So I became a writer by accident.

All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turn into confident ducks.

That's the kind of motif I bring to the books - that people take charge of their own lives.