“I do [like being a redhead]... I do... because lighter is better as you get older... It's nice... I can't be a blonde. I'm definitely not a blonde... So, that doesn't leave too many other colors available.”

“Being blonde now doesn't mean Marilyn Monroe vulnerability. Blonde in the Eighties means being in control.”

“I fought the director for a week to stay blonde, but, eventually, I had to give in. It's amazing how differently people react to you if you're not a blonde. Shortly after I'd dyed it, I walked past a building site and got no reaction whatsoever, and then I tried to get a cab and not one stopped. Getting a cab in London is difficult at the best of times, but being blonde certainly helps.”

“I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don't. If you have that inside of you and can't get it out, what do you do?”

“When I hold you in my arms,
I know that I can't do no wrong.
And when I hold you in my arms,
My love can't do me no harm.And I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice.
So nice, so nice, well I got you.”

“I had long blonde hair, but even as a little girl with long blonde hair, I looked like one of the Hanson boys.”

“When I created Quirke, he was 6ft 6in and blond. But then a woman reader wrote to me and said, 'Why do you keep saying his hair is blond? It's not. It's brown.' I wrote back to her and told her that, of course, she was right. So I darkened his hair and now that he's being played by Gabriel Byrne; with each successive book he gets a bit smaller and smaller.”

“The blonde lead the blind, but now I being to see”

“But she's a redhead, so she's probably evil, even at her tender age."

"I thought you liked redheads."

"I do. What's your point?”

“Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.”