At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.

Had it taken her this long to discover that she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires? All these years she had lived in isolation within herself and, strangely, from herself, never wanting or daring to look back.

I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilating it into what you’ve done before.

In the first half of the 20th Century, we lived through human disasters on a scale unimaginable. The Holocaust was once suggested would be the end of not only civilization, but art, too.

Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone.

And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.