I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of The Wind in the Willows, which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.