The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of people my age. and why all this emphasis on kissing and telling? Kisses are the least of it.

You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

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

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment.

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