You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty - and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.