Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

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

I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

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.

When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly.

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.