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.

You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

When I began to read as an adult, I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.