I don't believe in celebrating my birthday or in having a party.

I learnt in life what to do besides learning what not to do.

This politics of double standards has brought the country to the brink of disaster.

I am happy about the way things have turned out in my life.

I love my motherland.

It's a myth created by my 'well-wishers' that I used to have long drinking sessions every night with my cronies.

Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems.

Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.

I wasn't interested in politics. My attitude about it was, I can't make a difference no matter what I do. And the truth is, I don't even care enough to try.

My father got a trade union scholarship to Oxford; he lived and breathed politics; he was always watching current-affairs programmes. But I have a five-year-old child's attitude towards the news. Mainly, that it absolutely turns me off.

I got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.