A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked: "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" In the same way, we never thought to ask, "How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc?"

My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.

Recently, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke talked about the ways the lives of human beings will be changed in the next century. At least half of them I didn't understand at all, though I'm sure that kids today would know exactly what he meant. I'm somewhere in the past. I do think, however, that our brains have been damaged by technology. I meet kids who don't seem to be capable of reading a long sentence, much less a long book.

We are all creatures of the stars.

I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city.

There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

I treasure solitude. One doesn't have to have human contact.