A hungry man is an angry one.

I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person... to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as writer and also as oral communicator.

Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There's nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world - like we are called the Third World.

But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.

I always value my large kitchen because it was better to do everything there, you wash up, you do everything, rather than messing up another room and I pop my typewriter just next to it. So I still write now but I was doing more writing when the children were younger.

I came to England in 1962 as a very young bride, in my teens, hoping just to stay two years and go back.

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.