I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

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

She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

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.

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.