There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one day that she had turned imperceptibly into one of those women who have become old without ever having been middle aged: a little withered, a little acid, hard as nails, sentimentally kindhearted, and addicted to religion or small dogs.

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

there are two kinds of humanity, those who dream and those who don't, and both tend to despise, or to tolerate, the other.