London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble; we had severe energy problems; we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who had started a bombing campaign in English cities; politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

She would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events, not her own fantasies, roe to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.

What reader wants to be told what attitude to strike?

There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics.

...the world she ran through loved her and would give her what she wanted and would let it happen.