One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women havelost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions.

Knowledge, like experience, is valid in fiction only after it has dissolved and filtered down through the imagination into reality.

There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.

For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.