“A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of being a feminist is about frightening men.”

“A therapist might suggest my generosity is a way of buying affection. But buying people's love has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I don't want their love.”

“A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be and the most pleasurable to have and to hold.”

“Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.”

“As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.”

“As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.”

“As a militant troublemaker, I once wrote that it was the duty of every woman worthy of the description to upset men at least three times a day, on principle.”

“As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.”

“As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.”

“As I have got older, I have found myself making friends with the ease and swiftness that other people pick up fuzzballs on their jumpers. And I believe it is probably my lack of longing for 'The One' that makes me so popular.”

“As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.”

“Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.”

“Being a monarchist, and fawning over those 'above' you, you must naturally despise those 'below' or on the same socioeconomic level as yourself, because that is how hierarchy worship works.”

“Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.”

“Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).”

“But just think what a boring, bread-and-milk world this would be without the boastful.”

“Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.”

“Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.”

“Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on.”

“Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.”

“Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.”

“From paying off friends' tax bills to rescuing stray dogs and stuffing ??20 notes into the hands of homeless people, I can't get rid of my money fast enough.”

“Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.”

“Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.”

“Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense.”

“Having 'best friends' is - at least for me - as outdated and small-minded a concept as the idea of 'Sunday best clothes.'”

“Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.”

“I almost choke on my popcorn when I hear film stars, who walk on red carpets as much as the rest of us do on zebra crossings, criticising youngsters who crave fame.”

“I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.”

“I am not one of those fat birds who feels miserable because models are thin. Frankly, I feel more insulted by the idea that unless I see other fat birds in fashion magazines, I will be reduced to a sniveling wreck of a human being.”

“I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.”

“I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.”

“I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.”

“I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.”

“I just have a real problem with people who seek to portray fatness or thinness as moral concepts.”

“I'll declare my own interest right here at the start and admit that, like the vast majority of people, I find youthful looks appealing.”

“In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the U.K., where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.”

“Is the raggle-taggle Brangelina tribe any more bogus than that of the landlocked yummy mummy who believes that she can drop half a dozen brats and still keep a modest carbon footprint? I don't think so.”

“It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.”

“It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.”

“It shouldn't come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.”

“It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.”

“It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.”

“I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?”

“Knowing that the 'Sex and the City' chicks now rack up almost two centuries between them, why do some of us fuss and hiss about a bit of retouching on their forthcoming film poster?”

“Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to 'commit.'”

“Mind you, I've always been a very off-message type of fat broad; one who gladly admits she reached the size she is now solely through lack of discipline and love of pleasure, and who rather despises people (except those with proven medical conditions) who pretend that it is generally otherwise.”

“Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.”

“Most women are wise to the fact that lots of men love a cat-fight, and thus go out of their way not to give them one.”

“My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.”

“My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.”

“No matter how old and glorious the models, sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control.”

“People - and I include myself - get fat because they choose pleasure over self-denial.”

“People often yearn back to more innocent times, but more and more, as I get older, I find myself hankering after more jaded days.”

“Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.”

“Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.”

“Shame, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.”

“Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a little man.”

“Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.”

“Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.”

“Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.”

“The Feminist Me says that a woman's right to her own body should be inviolate at all times, free from fear of peeping paps.”

“The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.”

“The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.”

“The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.”

“There are exciting, intelligent, fat people - and exciting, intelligent, thin people.”

“There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.”

“To believe that one, or even three, mates can supply all the things one needs from one's friends is as stupid as believing married couples must do everything together.”

“We are used to female writers who use their private lives as unmitigated material being somewhat hormonal; this somehow 'excuses' what might be seen as a highly unfeminine ability to turn their personal upsets into money.”

“What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.”

“What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?”

“When a man wants to relax, he will slob out and really relax. Or he will pursue a hobby - anything from building models to watching sport.”

“When actresses jump on the anti-Iraq bandwagon, they often combine down-home momism with an ignorance of Islamist intent which is truly awesome.”

“When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?”

“When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.”

“When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.”

“Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index.”

“Women, more often than not, do things which aren't remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.”