Youth gives a sense of new days dawning bright, going on for ever, and a kind of tamped-down excitement which keeps breaking through even the worst days of poverty, depression and loneliness. But then youth is something which only exists in retrospect; you are barely conscious of it while you have it.

She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

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.

Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would.

All mothers love their own children as best they can, according to their temperament and circumstances, and all mothers should have done better, in their children's eyes, when the going gets tough for the children.

Writing is an act of generosity toward other people.

Sound waves do not die out. They travel forever and forever. All our sentences are immortal. Our useless bleatings circle the universe for all eternity.