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

When you've just made the most complete fool of yourself, you feel the need of a specially high horse to ride.

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.

I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure.

Mary Stuart wrote, 'My end is in my beginning.' It is easier to agree with her than to decide what is the beginning, and what is the end.

Emotion which you do not share can become intolerable.

if you cannot get what you want, common sense suggests that you should put your mind to wanting what you can get.