Quotes from Mariella Frostrup

Too often we forget that an ideal partner is someone who enhances an already full existence.

When the going gets tough, the prospect of delegating half your responsibilities to a willing volunteer, either to play a supporting role or take over the breadwinning, certainly holds allure.

If I was a man, I don't know if I'd settle down long before I was 50.

There are two ways of approaching your time on this planet: one is to sit around waiting for something to happen that will make sense of your existence, and the other is to get out there and find purpose for yourself.

In the city, I wake bolt upright in the small hours, convinced that intruders are marauding through our apartment despite Swiss bank-style security arrangements.

If I ever write a book, it will be called 'Bottle Blonde.'

Coming from a broken home, I wanted to be as sure as I could be that my kids would have two parents who will stay together and bring them up.

We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.

Saturday and Sunday mornings are the only time the children are allowed to turn on the television.

Ageing is one of those battles you're not going to win. I'll try to look as good as I can as long as I can. I don't think I'll do cosmetic surgery because I'm a wimp.

I was told that when you hit forty men stop looking at you. It's true, until you slip on a mini-skirt.

Only those with skin as thick as elephant hide can hope to sail through their teens unscathed by self-doubt and bouts of depression.

The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.

One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.

Having a baby is a disaster for your career. I don't think there's any sympathy.

Loneliness and rootlessness are just symptoms of an insecurity that assails us all when hitting this midlife moment. The world appears intent on blanking you out.

I met Jason on a charity walk in 2001, and we got married on a friend's boat in Panama two years later. It was the perfect wedding for two people who'd already been married and who weren't teenagers.

Whenever the party-girl tag gets attached to my name, it makes me want to snort with derision.

First, I was a glacial blonde doing music programmes. Then I was the film kind of sexy bird late at night. It was frustrating like I guess it's frustrating for everyone who is not fully employing their talents.

When I last looked, there weren't queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies' doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child.

Like cars, every relationship requires a bit of an occasional service, and fine-tuning should be compulsory.

Contrary to popular mythology, the best and most durable relationships are based not on vulnerability or passion but on a conjugation of positive attributes, a meeting of mind, body and soul that is all the more powerful as it is not weighed down with neediness and unreasonable expectation.

Nothing can prepare you for the all-consuming nature of motherhood, and I am very aware of my good fortune, as I spent years fretting about whether I'd ever meet anyone to have a baby with.

I don't want my daughter to think she has to dress like Beyonce!