I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

I was cleaning out the pigsty at a farm in Wales, where my mother had rented a room, when the results of my final school exam were handed to me by the postman, along with the news that I had a state scholarship to Oxford. I had waited for this letter for so many weeks that I had abandoned hope, deciding that I had failed ignominiously.

If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars.

Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.