My head was a magpie's nest lined with such bright scraps of information.

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.

Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.