Lionel Shriver, 49, won the 2005 Orange prize for her seventh novel, We Need to Talk about Kevin. She is married with no children
- Wearing a new dress for the first time is a simple pleasure - before it sinks in that I still look pretty much the same and have three other frocks just like it. l Exercise may be odious, but having exercised is splendid.
- Righteous indignation is an obnoxious indulgence of mine - its invigorating juices power me through the paper every morning.
- I regard astrology as rubbish - which is a typical Taurus thing to think.
- Bloody-mindedness, spite and delusions of grandeur, reliably unsupported by the facts, have brought me success.
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- I'm pro-monogamy, though not prescriptively so - the emotional complication of maintaining one relationship is demanding enough.
- Be grateful for love, even the kind that hurts.
- Death, and the subsidiary phenomenon of loss, is the primary source of poignance and of meaning. It makes narrative, therefore fiction, therefore my livelihood, possible.
- Always bear in mind that, between disease, ageing, infirmity and death, for all of us life is hard enough. So whatever you do, whether it be with killjoy fundamentalism, rigid ideology or whittling asides at parties, please don't make matters worse.