I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that is cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.