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.

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.

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.

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.

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.

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

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.