I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.

May the living have hope.

Those secrets residing in their hearts and minds held magnificent Energy. Humans were too inept to see it as anything but evil.

Human beings disappear; their histories remain.

All I ever wanted to do was write songs and get on a bus and go play them for people.

I cannot abide being bored.

We must get rid of the habit of classing all women together politically and thinking of the 'woman's vote' as one and indivisible.

I'm going to focus on speed, doing little things like my turns and my starts - just speed.

I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.

The public is anold woman.Let her maunderand mumble.