Quotes from Lynn Barber

I just think I'm fairly aggressive.

I have freedom. But freedom means total selfishness. It means nobody cares much what you do.

The best interviews like the best biographies should sing the strangeness and variety of the human race.

I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of 'living a lie'. I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable.

But perhaps this is what goes wrong with long marriages--you state your opinions, your likes and dislikes, at the beginning and then forget to mention when they change" (135).

What did I get from Simon? An education - the thing my parents always wanted me to have.

People say you shouldn't marry for looks but I disagree: if I tot up all the pleasure I got from looking at David over the years I'd say it amounted to a very substantial hill of beans.

I think people who try to run their marriages according to other people's expectations are insane. It is quite hard enough to keep a marriage together till death do you part- which I think should be the aim, even if it can't always succeed- without trying to do it to please other people. A good marriage is whatever suits the participants, and our marriage suited us fine.

I suspect this is always the way with conmen: they don't even have to construct a whole story, their victims fill in the gaps, reconcile the irreconciliables – their victims do most of the work.

I'm never exactly a slave to facts at the best of times. But does it matter? Who owns memories after all?

If I could communicate only by words on a page, how much more satisfactory I would be!

I am a deep believer in the unknowability of other people