I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

I did think of becoming a priest quite late on, when other boys were thinking of knocking over fences and going out with girls. I would have made a very good bishop: nice housekeeper, nice clothes - god, the clothes.

Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'

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

in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat

The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.