I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.