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.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.

Some writers can only deal with childhood experience, because it's complete. For another kind of writer, life goes on, and he's able to keep processing that as well.

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.