A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

[Some people think] that storytelling is telling jokes. So they have to be discouraged! Then others think that storytelling-is like an encounter group . . .

There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.

[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?

It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then — we went on dancing.