Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Those who are made can be unmade.

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time.

A statute is written to entrap meaning, a poem to escape it.