Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one's self behind a mask.

there are two kinds of humanity, those who dream and those who don't, and both tend to despise, or to tolerate, the other.

Literature is analysis after the event.

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

[On her mother:] I was in nervous flight from her ever since I can remember anything, and from the age of fourteen I set myself obdurately against her in a kind of inner emigration from everything she represented. Girls do have to grow up, but has this battle always been so implacable?