...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all.

I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a novel first to see whether she wanted to read it. It was a strange reading habit.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written