You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President's widow?

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain's success - so for me there's no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation.

Comics, for me, is being able to sing alone in the shower. I find it freeing. You just pick up a pen and get to it.

If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room, alone.

The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone.

And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life, build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

Life's an awfully lonesome affair. You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.