Sue Townsend

“I'd love a day devoid of responsibilities. I've often thought about going to a hotel just to have a day away from everything.”

“In the playground, I always made people laugh; I used to charge them three pence for an impression of a teacher. It kept me in toffees.”

“I am a very independent person, and I, you know, I maintain that independence, but, you know, certain things - I mean, it takes, you know, it's just much easier for other people if other people can help you every now and again.”

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

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

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

“The DSS offices are not given enough funding, their staff are poorly paid and are driven to distraction by the amount of work they have to do. There is frequent turnover of staff. Morale is extremely low. Working with desperate people all day is very dispiriting; their unhappiness rubs off on you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I'm spectacularly disorganised. I wrote my latest book in seven different notebooks scattered throughout my house.”

“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 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.”

“My dark secrets are life threatening. Pockets of unhappiness set in aspic that build and build. I have this primitive feeling that if something good happens, it is going to be followed by something bad. There is always a price to pay.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.”

“I am surrounded by counselors. My sister is a counselor. My daughter is training to be a counselor. A lot of my friends are counselors.”

“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.'”

“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?”

“Being poor with three small children is terrifying. You can't make any plans. You know you're not going on holiday, ever. There's no way you could ever afford driving lessons or a car. And the guilt I used to feel: they had holes in their shoes, and at one point, I had to send them to school wearing Wellingtons when the sun was shining.”