I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation. I'm an escapist kind of writer.

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.

I wore miniskirts in the days when no fat girls should have, and with total delight.

I have been blessed with friends who do things rather than buy things: friends who will change books at the library, take a bag of your old clothes to a thrift store, bring you cuttings and plant them in a window box, fill the bird feeder in your garden when you can't get out.

My memory of my home was that it was very happy, and that there was more fun and life there than there was anywhere else.

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.

I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.

I have been lucky enough to travel a lot, meet great people in many lands. I have liked almost everyone I met along the way.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

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.

I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.

Success is not like a cake that needs to be divided. It's more like a heap of stones - a cairn. If someone is successful, they add a stone to the cairn. It gets very high and can be seen from all over the world. That's how I see it.

When I was being brought up, we weren't allowed to wallow in self-pity, which was a thoroughly good thing. We were all fine and healthy because that was what we were told to be.

I suppose, to be fair, I don't miss the energy of youth very much - because I was never fit. So it doesn't matter not being able to walk miles, striding the countryside, taking deep breaths and enjoying the scenery. That was never on my agenda.

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.

We have to make our own happiness, and we have to make our own decisions and play the hand that is dealt to us.

When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I got older, I spent so much time marking books or sitting at a desk writing that there was no room for exercise - not that I would have bothered anyway.

I'm particularly fond of boned chicken breasts with a little garlic under the flesh and cooked in a casserole for 40 minutes with a jar of olives, some cherry tomatoes and a spoonful of olive oil.

My father went to work by train every day. It was half an hour's journey each way, and he would read a paperback in four journeys. After supper, we all sat down to read - it was long before TV, remember!

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.

I thought it must be desperate to be old. To wake up in the morning and remember that you were ancient - and so behave that way. I thought old people were full of aches and pains and horrible illnesses.

Modern surgery has been like a miracle to those who thought the pain was going to go on forever.

My family life reads a bit like 'Little House on the Prairie.' I was big sister to Joan, Renee, and brother William, and we grew up in Dalkey, a little town 10 miles outside of Dublin. It was a secure, safe and happy childhood, which was meant to be a disadvantage when it comes to writing stories about family dramas.