Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.

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.

Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.

Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.