I don't write for any particular kind of person.

Unimaginative people are spared quite a lot.

A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, 'Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire,' and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

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

People try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier.

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.

Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write.