I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did.

You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’ ‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.

If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.

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

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

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

I once stole a book. It was really just the once, and at the time I called it borrowing. It was 1970, and the book, I could see by its lack of date stamps, had been lying unappreciated on the shelves of my convent school library since its publication in 1945.