I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

A rose by any other name Would get the blame For being what it is-- The colour of a kiss, The shadow of a flame. A rose may earn another name, So call it love; So call it love I will, And love is like the sea, Which changes constantly, And yet is still The same.

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

I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.

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.

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.

Pirates have always fascinated me.