I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.

I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you have these distinct phases.

Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.

You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.