Writer

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.

When there's a war, people get married.

I have ideas that I will probably never write now.

When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.

My mother was a woman who was very frustrated. She had a great deal of ability, and all this energy went into me and my brother.

God knows why nobody ever learns from the preceding generation - but they don't.

You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.

I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had - I don't know what - the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way, perhaps. That's what I think writers are for.

I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.

I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married.

I'm just a story teller.

When I was bringing up a child, I taught myself to write in very short, concentrated bursts. If I had a weekend, or a week, I'd do unbelievable amounts of work.

Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.

My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.