“I can spot empty flattery and know exactly where I stand. In the end it’s really only my own approval or disapproval that means anything.”

When I was 15 I became a full-time singer in a band. At 18 I made my first record.

It has always felt like a failure that Bjorn and I couldn’t keep our family together.

When I’m living in the world of luxury and celebrity, which is where I found myself for a large part of my life, it’s a walk-on part.

The reason behind our separation is one of those things I definitely don’t want to go into!

Even when I was still a child I cut out pictures of prams from newspapers and imagined the feeling of pushing my own pram through fresh winter snow and seeing the wheels’ tracks behind me in the snow.

When I record, it feels like I’m in a bubble. There’s nothing else in my head right then.

My life contains so many other things; I have my children, my grandchildren, my two dogs and a big place in the country. I have my own life.

The press has always written that I am a recluse and a mysterious woman, but I am more down-to-earth than they think.

I would like to sing the theme tune of a big film – something like ‘Titanic’.

When you love someone, and you’ve lost that one, then nothing really matters.

My professional persona never loosens its grip, keeping an eye on me at all times.

There was a time when the music fell silent. Both within me and around me.

I have one pug and one Czechoslovakian dog called Prazsky krysarik.

Abba’s last tour was a success but awful for me.

I must be allowed to be as I am.

No one who has experienced facing a screaming, boiling, hysterical audience can avoid feeling shivers in the spine. It’s a thin line between celebration and menace.

If he had 30 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, I can tell you exactly how he did it, what type of shots he made and who he passed to.

I want you to take a good, hard look at me, America, because this is exactly what you’ve got coming.

You can not define being exactly on time.

Whether one welcomes or deplores it, nothing is more surely and exactly characteristic of modern times than the irresistible invasion of the human world by technology. Mechanism invading like a tide all the places of the earth and all forms of social activity.

Through fidelity, we situate ourselves and maintain ourselves in the hands of God so exactly as to become one with them in their action.

If you could make the world exactly to your liking, consider very specifically just how that world would be. If you could spend your time doing precisely what you wish, how would the moments of your life be lived?

Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way.

My last name is originally Irish. I’m not exactly sure whereabouts it’s from, but I’ve got family branches that were traced back there.