I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.

But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic.