I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.

I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldnt have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.

Rebecca is an example of how not to manage men. The rules of the game never change, it requires subtlety.

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.

Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot. They're often much happier, because they don't go through all the variety of conceptions of the person they love.