You will find that women who are pregnant often don't want to be and women who aren't desperately envy those who are. Labour wards are always full of very punitive people.

We shelter children for a time; we live side by side with men; and that is all. We owe them nothing, and are owed nothing. I think we owe our friends more, especially our female friends.

There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

One can learn, at least. One can go on learning until the day one is cut off.

I was seduced by secrets, which are to true love as artificial sweetener is to sugar, calorie-free but in the long run carcinogenic, not the real thing, and only a peculiar aftertaste in the mouth to tell you so, to warn you.

Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

Fiction, on the whole, and if it is any good, tends to be a subversive element in society.