Quotes from Mariella Frostrup

When a father of a daughter dies, you elevate them. And you sort of deify them.

While we women dilly-dally, making decisions, leaving jobs half done, forgetting where we've put the house keys while we water the Hoover and leave the laundry in the dishwasher, men, like blinkered horses, look straight ahead, oblivious to peripheral vision, where a discarded pile of wet towels might have caught their eye.

I know we should aspire to be higher philosophical beings, contemplating the universe and becoming more refined humans, but if all we did was think, then arguably we'd never have invented the wheel.

I have a producer friend who despairs that I come across as rather frosty and never show the real me, and she might have a point.

In my child's-eye view, whenever I was exposed to pain, it meant that my mother had let me down.

The idea of exposing the British public to the full breadth of my personality isn't a good one.

I have a very childish attitude to books - a very non-analytic enthusiasm... like Alice falling down the chute.

With the Internet, we can communicate instantly across the globe, but the net also makes it possible for us to shrink ever further into our own skins - a state of being that neither suits the human temperament nor provides ground for further growth.

It's an absolute disgrace that there isn't a books programme on the BBC.

We're naturally programmed to endure a muddle of emotions as we leave childhood behind.

The more brutal it gets in the working world, the more appealing the prospect of having someone at home creating a sanctuary becomes. Increasingly couples, particularly with children, are making that tough choice, with one or other partner electing to embrace domestic duties while the other brings home the cash.

What an unappealing responsibility that is to lumber any prospective lover with: the need to be a saviour, not simply an equal partner.

As we mature, there are people with whom we run out of steam, but there are also those with whom a little straight talking would prove rewarding.

As a species, we tend to be doers, forever shaping and reshaping the world to better suit our purposes.

Since so many romantic comedies vary little in their storyline, the success or failure of such movies depends largely on whether we believe in the relationship of the protagonists.

Life is rife with frustrations, jealousies and, on occasion, an overwhelming sense of its injustices, but it's a big mistake to let such negative sentiments rule our lives and dictate choices.

Fridays are always movie night at our flat in Kensington, West London.

I'm a control freak. And more so now that I have children.

I can't sleep in an isolated place without pills, earplugs, and both my children in bed with me for fear of scary, feral characters with a hankering for the wilderness.

Once you've raised a child to adulthood, you can only be as demanding as your offspring allow.

In person, George Clooney lives up to all your expectations.

I would go out with people who really didn't like me very much and then wonder why we weren't getting married!

I hate the thought of my children being glued to a screen. Children only play on computers all day because their parents let them.

It's a universal truth that no parent wishes to acknowledge that the fear and phobias we are in thrall to in adulthood almost invariably connect back to childhood experiences.