People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

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.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.

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