Things are not what they seem.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

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.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

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

I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.

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.