Perhaps it is not such a bad marriage after all? There are innumerable marriages where two people, both twisted and wrong in their depths, are well matched, making each other miserable in the way they need, in the way the pattern of their life demands.

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.

What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it.

Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.

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.

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

Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching our for happiness.