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

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.

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.

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’.

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.

I am uninterested in appearing in newspapers and on television.

When I was 25, Abba was formed. After Abba I made three solo albums. Maybe I have been productive enough.

There is a mass of people, we might as well admit, who if they weren’t watching television, would be doing absolutely nothing else.

I have nothing, I have no props.’ And that was Andy Samberg. And Andy Samberg said he was looking at me going, ‘Oh, that guy has no props. He doesn’t need props.’ And that was the first time we met, was in that elevator.

The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing had ever tasted so good as the cool golden ale she swallowed from a pewter tankard. She slept deeply that night and longer than she had intended.

There’s nothing a man can do, that I can’t do better and in heels

Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.

Beware of him who promises something for nothing. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best.

The media … is like an oil painting. Close up, it looks like nothing on Earth. Stand back and you get the drift.