And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person.'

I would not be at all surprised to find out . . . that the dimensions of buildings affect us in ways we don't guess.

Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.

My father was in the First World War.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.