Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.

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

Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read.

For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.

I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.