We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.

One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.