I wouldnt mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

What does it say?" I said, when I had. She said, "It is filled with all the words for how I want you...Look.

Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether its terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate change - huge things that affect us deeply, and yet things about which we can do, individually, very little.

All I can do is write about whatever grabs me.

Even ashes are a part of your freedom.

For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?