Ann Widdecombe

Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.

I am not normally a fan of organised tours: few public figures are, feeling themselves objects of constant curiosity.

The first visit I made to Australia was in 1996 when I was the prisons' minister and was looking at other countries' penal systems.

After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.

We need less political correctness and more political courage.

Great political leaders risk unpopularity, patiently explain their case and confront prejudice, bigotry and vested interests.

Example and general milieu, once considered so important in the nurture of children, are sacrificed on the altars of the false god we call free choice but which imprisons us all in a collective moral paralysis and delivers an anarchy that the State itself shrinks from challenging.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

On the whole, my disposition is to say yes, unless I've got good reason to say no, and I think that's being in public life.

I don't analyse myself.

Everybody who talks about 'Strictly' talks psychobabble. They say they're going on a journey, or trying to build their confidence, or getting over a divorce or something. People say there must be a deep reason to do these things. But there isn't! I'm just having fun.

I have always believed prison can be very, very good for you but not by the act of deprivation of liberty alone. There has to be more to life inside than that.

Having served as a member of parliament for more than two decades, I'm well aware that there can be genuine constraints that affect the speed at which certain issues progress.

The Home Office is a vast department where business as usual means that something is going wrong and, given the nature of the business, the disasters rarely lack a high profile.

Always carry a handkerchief. Especially in television studios.

I've never understood this business of 'I could always have had something more.' If what you had was good, then thanks be to God.

The Royal Opera House? I once had the immense privilege of appearing there and was awed by the air of refinement of those seemingly ethereal beings who floated about in the highest echelons of musical accomplishment, effortlessly producing virtuoso performances in several different languages.

I think a sense of family, of commitment to family, and of helping each other and standing by each other, are essential. I pity anyone who doesn't grow up with that.

Happiness is best defined by its antonym, which is less 'unhappiness' than 'anxiety.' Anyone who is not oppressed by intolerable worry or grievous pain is almost certainly happy, whether rich or poor, well or ill, successful or frustrated.

Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.