But it's no good letting your emotions get the better of you.

Running the country is like running one big business.

I don't actually like dogs smelling of anything other than natural dogs.

I'm not looking for hobbies, I'm looking for investments.

I'm always asked about how women get on in the boardroom and my answer is always, 'Never acknowledge that you are a woman. Your gender is not the point.'

I did ballroom dancing at school, but I was atrocious.

I am proud of the fact I would never tamper with my looks. I love the fact I have earned every line and wrinkle.

I don't spend a lot of time worrying about how I look and I don't fall into the trap of judging myself by my appearance.

I look in the mirror and see lines, but I have earned those lines. It has taken me 59 years to get them and I am not losing them now.

I was never good at taking instructions.

When I first started on 'Dragons' Den,' I was under pressure to buy flashy cars and boats but I resisted.

I would have liked children, but I am not all disappointed. I've had a lot of stuff thrown at me in life so I don't dwell on it.

I'm deeply impatient. If I can't park directly in front of somewhere, I go home.

I am terrible. When I buy stuff, I want it straight away. If it says two to three weeks delivery - no way. I will find somewhere that will deliver it that afternoon.

I care a lot about animal welfare and children. Although I don't have children myself.

My friends would say I'm not the person to go to for tea, a cuddle and sympathy, because I can't deliver. But if you want something sorted out and need a champion who will stand by your side, that is me.

I'm not particularly tactile.

Peter Jones is hot.

I'm not great at taking compliments because I always find the thing I could do better.

The minute I think 'Oh God, I don't want to do this because I'm scared,' is the moment I have to do something, whatever it is.

I'm not a woman in the 'Den,' I'm a Dragon, we're all there to invest, it has nothing to do with gender.

I don't cook at all, and whenever my husband Paul goes away he leaves meals for me and I can't even be bothered to put them in the oven.

You can't beat a bar of chocolate between cheap white bread - there is nothing like it.

I don't exactly know the moment that I was a millionaire but it was in my twenties.

I didn't want to get married.

Business doesn't cut you any slack because of your gender. You're either good at what you do or you're not.

It can be difficult to find investment for a new business, particularly one which is highly innovative or breaks new ground.

We have a very good history of manufacturing in this country but I worry that these skills are being lost. We walk around saying, 'We haven't got any manufacturing any more' but Made In Britain really means something, particularly in other parts of the world. We need to support British manufacturing.

Both my parents were entrepreneurs and built a nice leisure business. But money was tight when I was growing up.

My parents felt I should earn my money because I would then value it. So they would pay me a shilling or two to do jobs such as washing the car, cleaning and washing up.

My first paid job was leading pony rides along Minehead seafront when I was eight. I probably got paid sixpence - not much but I loved horses and it gave me a great chance to be near them.

I think I'm absolutely perfect. Because if I'm not good at something I completely banish it from my mind. Completely. Like it never happened.

People can be very serious with me, and expect me to be very businesslike all the time. So I have to help them get over that by showing them that I enjoy life.

Nearly everybody, when they first meet me, seems to have this sense of trepidation.

I won't get involved in businesses that I think cut across any kind of animal welfare issues.

The one thing I say, I will invest in anything - I don't care what it is - as long as it doesn't cut across my ethical code, because at the end of the day I want to be able to live with myself. I want to feel proud of what I do.

If someone needs help, I don't do tea and sympathy, but I'm honest and practical - that's how I was brought up.

People shouldn't choose their careers on whether it's cool or not. They should choose their careers on, 'Are they good at it, do they love it, is it going to give them a good life?'

I often see people who I think could be really successful in business but they just don't realise they have the skills and they don't believe in themselves.

I don't like anything with too much dependency. Children are very dependent, which is probably why we never had them.

I am a more rounded person than you see on television. You don't bark your way to being a success.

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other.

Why don't men like to stop and ask directions? This question, which I first addressed in my 1990 book 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation', garnered perhaps the most attention of any issue or insight in that book.

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.