Her own contempt for any forms of pressure society might put on her was so profound and instinctive that she as instinctively despised anyone who paid tribute to them.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

After a certain age - and for some of us that can be very young - there are no new people, beasts, dreams, faces, events: it has all happened before.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing.

It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.