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.

When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

It was unfortunate for other women who might come after [Margaret Thatcher] that the first woman to become prime minister was a male impersonator.

She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.

[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.