Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school g….

I was born in a small suburb of Ilford in a rather nasty housing estate that my mother despised. She had grown up in the country, so when the war cam….

I was cleaning out the pigsty at a farm in Wales, where my mother had rented a room, when the results of my final school exam were handed to me by th….

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade..

I met my second husband on a bus. We looked at each other and that was it. We were both married to other people at the time and behaved badly, but we….

There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for ….

I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way..

I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers an….

I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially ….

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor..

I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting..

But I don't write about sex for today's teenagers. Or Doc Martens boots either. I'm more interested in exploring how exactly the world is run, which ….

Adults get more confused by social worker jargon. Unlike children, they are also less likely to see two sides of an argument, and they no longer thin….

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the ba….

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm..

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults..

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I….

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for….

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people..

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it..

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened..