I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

Writers should provoke disagreement.

My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.

It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.