Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.

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.

One friend dies and we remain indifferent; another dies, perhaps less intimate, and we see ourselves as dead, and weep, mourn, tear our hair or find ourselves caught up in the madness of the wake, competing with others as to who was closest, now suffers most.

Nowadays most people wear black most of the time anyway: go to a literary party and one would imagine everyone there was in perpetual mourning for their lives.

What makes women happy? Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying.

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

Take me! Well, not quite take me, love me now, take me eventually