I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.

Books are not about passing the time. They're about other lives. Other worlds.

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.