However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I've always been. Hard to explain that to the young. we may look truly reptilian, but we're not a separate tribe.

I turned the pages so fast. And I suppose I was, in my mindless way, looking for a something, version of myself, a heroine I could slip inside as one might a pair of favourite shoes.

I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

This is the pain-pleasure of having newly adult children; they're innocent and ruthless in forgetting their sweet old dependence.

Shall there be womanly times? Or shall we die?

Nothing that can be, can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.