What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.

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.

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

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.

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.