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

When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

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

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.

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.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

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