Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

It seemed sensible to move to a market town where I could walk everywhere.

A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, 'Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire,' and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.

I was sent to a finishing school, which didn't last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I 'came out' before going to a domestic science school.

Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in battle.

Each marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what's going on in another person's marriage.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write.

In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it's a lot of fun!

Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.

My first husband would never make up his mind in less than five years, so I used to get him to think that whatever course of action needed to be taken was his idea. Then he'd go right ahead.

We all lie to each other, present some sort of front.

Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.

They may turn out to be a great disappointment, or perhaps they may be full of enchanting surprises.

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.

I always read that men don't like intelligent girls, but I've always found the reverse.

People try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier.

Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.

It was pretty awful for us children because we never really knew the local children. Mother was keen for us to learn languages, so our travels took us to France and Italy, as well as the West Country.

I have a garden, and I'm passionately interested in young people.

I found out only recently that we were making an index of enemy code signs.

Rebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.

You know what it's like to persuade a pigheaded child to do something they don't want to. If they hear the same suggestion from someone else, they'll go right off and do it.

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.

I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldn't have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.

I don't write for any particular kind of person.

Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

I miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting my car washed, taking walks.

I like to sing in the car with the windows rolled down and hair blowing all over my face.

I'd really like to get the girl, shoot the gun, drive the car, have fun. I even have these kind of action dreams, where I'm the action guy.

When you're in the car, how well you do is down to you and you alone-no band, no management, no marketing.

I will never have a drink and get behind the wheel of a car. It's not illegal to drink and drive, but there becomes a certain point where it does become a crime.

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me 'Can you give me a lift?' I said 'Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it.'

I never had the high-paying job or the company car. It took me over a decade to pay off my student loans. I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes.

My wife wants sex in the back of the car and she wants me to drive.

Well, honey, I had the million dollar houses, I had the car, I had the horse, I had the barn; I had everything. Was I set free? I didn't even know what that meant.

I was encouraged to hear that GM has made great progress on the hydrogen car.

Should we have background checks, waiting periods? To drive a car you have to pass a test that shows you know how to drive your car safely, you should have to do the same thing with guns.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

But once you have satisfied your material needs, which I think every wealth creator should - the house, the car, the plane, the boat - what comes next?

The hydrogen powered car, with its high fuel mileage and zero emission rate, is just one example of the products under development that will help increase our energy independence.

There's nothing wrong with the car except that it's on fire.

Obviously the first sentiment is disappointment that we didn't get the car home and more disappointment that at the time that it stopped the car was in the lead.

In 1950, when the Giants signed me, they gave me $15,000. I bought a 1950 Mercury. I couldn't drive, but I had it in the parking lot there, and everybody that could drive would drive the car. So it was like a community thing.