Quotes from Mariella Frostrup

I feel lucky that I had my children late. Not that I would advise it in any shape or form. But I know friends who had children when they were young, struggled with feeling trapped. I can honestly say I've never once resented the fact that I couldn't go out because of my kids.

Having lived a full and stimulating life before I had my kids, I've relished every minute I've had to spend with them and felt a degree of confidence in dealing with their trials and tribulations to date.

Sustaining true friendship is a lot more challenging than we give it credit for.

I was raised a socialist by two very socialist parents, and I still feel very animated about socialist principles.

Writers want to talk. They can't wait to tell you what they've been thinking. And because they've been in solitude, they've had some fairly decent thoughts.

As for tweeting and texting: impassioned discussions, particularly when they're intimate, don't work in abbreviated script messages. No relationship should begin or end in 140 characters.

In my late teens and early twenties, I thought having children was possibly the most irresponsible thing you could do because I thought that the world was a dreadful place; I thought the sooner we all got off the planet, the better.

From Mozambique to Chad, South Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of the future for themselves and their families.

There are many ways to make the most of your time on the planet, and propagation of the species is just one of them. If you're convinced that it's the key to your happiness, there are routes open to you, whether with the help of modern medical science, marrying into a readymade one, or through fostering and adoption.

My parents split up, and a lot of things going on in the outside world made me want to immerse myself in an alternative world.

I love my children, but I don't really want to talk about them. I'm not that much of a freakish middle-aged mother, I'm just very lucky, and there isn't much more to say. I'd like not to be constantly expected to be a spokesman for things that are part of the natural rhythm of a woman's life.

For most of us, when our 'dreams' - I use the word with reservations - came true, and marriage and motherhood became a reality, the romcoms, like horoscopes, swiftly lost their allure.

Quite honestly, if we do manage to destroy the planet with our devil-may-care attitude to natural resources, I'd suggest we leave, as a dossier in our defence, the collected letters to agony aunts and uncles down the generations. It would certainly prove that we weren't all bad!

I used to go out with someone who was a really great diver, and we used to go to all the great dive spots all over the globe - although I would spend most of my time crying because I was often too scared to go into the water. But once I was in the water, I loved it.

Many new lovers and spouses struggle to reconcile themselves with their partners' relationship history, but it's an insecurity I left behind in my 20s.

Far too many girls' and women's romantic relationships are formed around a negation of their own worth and attributes rather than a confirmation of them.

Normally, the thin-skinned have an endless array of excuses for why their workaday interactions are so much harder to bear for them than for the rest of us. In the eyes of the self-suffering, they are being victimised, used and always abused, when they're actually experiencing exactly the same body blows as the rest of us.

Kids are like glue: they can bond together, unlikely companions, even when there is little else left to maintain the connection.

I recognise my old self in a lot of the letters I get from single women who are unrealistic about what they want.

Finding extracurricular activities with your husband that are unrelated to children, family and work is a priority.

Placing 'amicable' and 'separation' together creates an oxymoron - we don't usually decide to end a partnership until the very sight of our soon-to-be ex fills us with disgust, misery, agony or a combination of all three.

For many young women, the dream of independence and a home of their own is a tantalising goal, while a lifetime devoted solely to catering for another person's needs would be hard to countenance.

Translating any insights I have for strangers' lives into positive action in my own has proved a challenge. While I've learned a lot about what everyone else is thinking, I fail miserably to use such knowledge in my private relationships.

You only need to look at Jane Austen to see how crossed wires can become a defining aspect of romantic life. Then again, if the course of true love ran more smoothly, it would have a terribly detrimental effect on our cache of love stories.