Those who write need that "willing suspension of disbelief ", as Coleridge called it.

In order not to cut out a large part of one's private life, the creative work should not swallow up every other form of self-expression. But that is the most complicated thing.

The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

Competition between women is good only if it does not prevail; that is to say if it coexists with affinity, affection, with a real sense of being mutually indispensable, with sudden peaks of solidarity in spite of envy, jealousy and the whole inevitable cohort of bad feelings.

I had to discover very quickly that class origins cannot be erased, regardless of whether we climb up or down the sociocultural ladder.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.

At most, I may write when I am disturbed by something. I have recently discovered the pleasure of finding written answers to written questions.