“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.”

I just want to live in peace and quiet.

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.

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.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else’s words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

Why they emigrated is not exactly clear, but many scholars believe it was because they saw the way Sweden was going, i.e. neutral.

If, for instance, we’d made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it.

I’m not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there’s going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what’s going to happen.

Premie’ re approximation: j’e cris pour de truire, en les de crivant avec pre cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d’envahir ma vie e veille e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people – 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there.