Sue Townsend Quotes

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Sue Townsend

Profession : Novelist

Birth : April 2, 1946

I married two weeks after my 18th birthday, far too young, and by the time I was 23 I was a single mother of three small children, Sean, Daniel and Victoria, living in a prefab house.

Sue Townsend

My dark secrets are life threatening. Pockets of unhappiness set in aspic that build and build. I have this primitive feeling that if something good happens, it is going to be followed by something bad. There is always a price to pay.

Sue Townsend

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.

Sue Townsend

'The Gambler' by Dostoevsky. It was the first time I realised that it was possible to have good and evil in one person. It led me to read a lot of Russian literature.

Sue Townsend

I always have this image of a woman running across a desert carrying children, trying to find water and food, not knowing when they'll get that. And her feet are slashed up from the dry, hard earth... Even when I'm uncomfortable, sometimes in pain, or just cold... I think, 'Thank God for what I've got.'

Sue Townsend

I'm spectacularly disorganised. I wrote my latest book in seven different notebooks scattered throughout my house.

Sue Townsend

Live with all of your senses.

Sue Townsend

I am the world's worst diabetic.

Sue Townsend

Every time I start a new piece of work, I spend a long while under the duvet thinking I can't do it.

Sue Townsend

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

Sue Townsend

We had library books in our house, but not our own. So you had 14 days to read them. There would be eight books a fortnight in our house and I'd read as many of those as I could.

Sue Townsend

Yes, I hate it when people call me a 'national treasure'. It takes away your bite and makes you feel like a harmless old golden Labrador.

Sue Townsend

I am surrounded by counselors. My sister is a counselor. My daughter is training to be a counselor. A lot of my friends are counselors.

Sue Townsend

Sometimes I rant, in a comical way, about how the gods give with one hand and take with the other.

Sue Townsend

I'd love a day devoid of responsibilities. I've often thought about going to a hotel just to have a day away from everything.

Sue Townsend

I took my sight and mobility for granted.

Sue Townsend

Watching 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' is my guilty pleasure.

Sue Townsend

I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

Sue Townsend

When all my kids were at home, I used to write from midnight onwards.

Sue Townsend

I prefer to keep my secrets to myself, to the grave... and beyond!

Sue Townsend