I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago for Barnes and Noble, and people were ringing up from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France. I experienced it as an informal chat, which was pleasant, but I couldn't quite take it in. It had a strong element of unreality. I can't be bothered to switch to a computer at my age, though I might get along with e-mail, which sounds appealing.

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

The human community is evolving... . We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even in the long run to start thinking.

I am interested only in stretching myself, on living as fully as I can.

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.

My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.