It's a terrible poison, writing.

You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.

Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.

Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.

Good writing is always new.

Things are not what they seem.

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