Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

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

The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

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.