I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.

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

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.

Ten thousand years of civilization shed in an instant when you put a woman behind the wheel of a car.

To be a classic, a novel should be original.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

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.