Maeve Binchy

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.

Success is not like a cake that needs to be divided. It's more like a heap of stones - a cairn. If someone is successful, they add a stone to the cairn. It gets very high and can be seen from all over the world. That's how I see it.

I know that, for me, I need to try to cover myself while breastfeeding so that no one snaps a picture. If this wasn't the case, I probably wouldn't mind as much because my son is my biggest concern. My attitude is, if someone sees a little somethin' somethin', don't look if you don't like it.