The knives of jealousy are honed on details.

Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.

When one has children one has no privacy. They take it for granted that what is yours is theirs, personal things and the secrets of your heart, as well as possessions.

the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.

To be a classic, a novel should be original.

Nobody really lives in the present.