Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.

A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

A man can go from being a lover to being a stranger in three moves flat but a woman under the guise of friendship will engage in acts of duplicity which come to light very much later. There are different species of self-justification.

Fiction is the great repository of the moral sense. The wicked get punished.