I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.

The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.

How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.

I am easily persuaded to continue to have fun.

I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

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.