I seemed to have spent the whole time either reading, which I loved, or laughing, which I love, or fooling about, which I loved. There was the usual teenage angst: "Nobody understands me" and "I'm the only genius in the world" and all that stuff. But that didn't get very deep.

No one has the right to live without being shocked.

She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy; she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.