I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the fact that in my family there was such a disproportionate female element.

Actually, I don't even like parties. I would much prefer a room with four friends who sit around and have dinner. I detest nightclubs. And I don't like places where the noise is so loud you can't talk to people.

What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book - perhaps an encylopaedia - even a whole language.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

My children are English, and both of their mothers were English.

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.