It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outward, until after many years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.

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.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

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

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

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

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.