[Edinburgh] is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.

Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realize how widespread envy was.

Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

This is another thing which I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.

I am often thanked by people for inventing the term traditionally built. The people who give me thanks for this are often traditionally built themselves.