The novelist is more a marathon runner than long-distance runner and the kind of courage it takes working in such isolation cannot be underestimated. I really respect my fellow writers on this front.

Indeed, you become what you eat. In which case I am an onion. Layered, slightly sour and guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes.

Be bad, and if you can't be bad be worse.

No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.

Trust is won not given.

We cannot choose the times we live in. Just as, sometimes, we cannot choose whom we love.

Memory is a great deceiver: it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure.