Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.
A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I’m homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint.
Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never.
Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?
I suppose I’m the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it’s the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other.
Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date? Of course they’re out of date. Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
I write plays about things that I can’t resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.