If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.
English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.
I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.
I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.
I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.
Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.