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.

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

You cannot divide minds into sexes. Each human being presents an individual problem.

One cannot withdraw from the life of the community. Injury to one member of it cannot fail to be the concern of all.

There is a country proverb which says, 'If you don't trouble trouble - trouble won't trouble you.

A good many established writers seem to have the feeling that some day they are going to be found out, revealed as frauds.

Anger was both a disfiguring and a revealing passion.