[Referring to Trish, her civil partner] I asked her about earlier girlfriends and she said she'd never had a year-after-year relationship, and I thou… - Jacqueline Wilson

I don't think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay…I'm sure they could find much more glamorous examples.

I can't think of a book where there's a woman born into a working-class background, who in her 70s is living a very comfortable, upper-middle-class sort of life; a woman who married at 19, had a baby at 21, was a policeman's wife for years, but whose marriage broke up in late middle age and who became very well known for a time. She then met a woman and became very happy with her. There isn't one!

[After reaching no. 7 in the best-seller lists] But a certain JK Rowling came along and you're never going to beat that. And there's always been one or two others much better than me. [Better or bigger?] Bigger! [laughs] Occasionally better.