Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

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

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

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.

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