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.

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

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

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.

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

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.

Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn't afford to run a car.