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.

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

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person.'

Women often get dropped from memory, and then history.

As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.