She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.

I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.