There is and always has been for me a peculiar need to write. This is very different from wanting to be a writer. To be a writer always seemed something so far removed from my talents and abilities and imaginings that it didn't afflict me at all as a notion when I was young. But I was always conscious that I wanted to write.

... the things that happened in your body were never as bad as the things that happened in your mind.

Children want one thing at a time, and want that one thing passionately.

Most of the things one worries about never happen.

Any road is bound to arrive somewhere if you follow it far enough

when married people begin to talk about their rights, it means something has gone pretty far wrong between them.

it isn't good tactics to ask for something that you know will be refused.