I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot.

My father was in the First World War.

What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work.

...or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn't want to see.

Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.