My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.

I love 'Sex and the City;' I think I've seen every episode.

Sometimes it is quite surprising, the emotional intensity of it. I was in NY one day, in Barnes and Noble, and I could see this woman following me around and after a bit I stopped and said 'Hello' and she just looked at me and said: “PLEASE LET EDITH BE HAPPY!”