As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.

Young girls are sad. They like to be; it makes them feel strong.

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

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.

Mine the long night The secret place Where lovers meet In long embrace In purple dark In silvered kiss Forget the world And grasp your bliss

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.