For Mum, life was fundamentally hell. You went blind, you got raped, people forgot your birthday, Nixon got elected, your husband fled with a blonde from Beckenham, and then you got old, you couldn't walk and you died.

I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.

I'm always writing. I'm an obsessive. It's not because I'm a disciplined person. It's because I'm crazy about it.

My guess is that she is uncomfortable in such an intransigent world but is unable to live accordingly to her own desire.

The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.

Being in love means being at the mercy of someone's childhood.

You can't spend your life beating yourself up for something that happened yesterday. You die if you don't follow your desire.