I don’t think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
For there is never any way to go but in.
The difficulty of writing about sex, for women, is that sex is best when not thought about, not analysed.
We do not know which of our silver products will be judged as gold by our successors, nor does it matter.
I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.
The Freudians describe the conscious as a small lit area, all white, and the unconscious as a great dark marsh full of monsters. In their view, the monsters reach up, grab you by the ankles, and try to drag you down.
Writers do not come out of houses without books.
Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one’s self behind a mask.
The art of living in a small town is one of the most difficult to acquire.
Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work...
On the news two dozen events of fantastically different importance are announced in exactly the same tone of voice. The voice doesn’t discriminate between a divorce, a horse race, a war in the Middle East.
All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to being noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous.
What I did have, which others perhaps didn’t, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.
Capable people do not understand incapacity; clever people do not understand stupidity.
Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.
You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.
Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size.
Mother’s room, and mother’s need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people’s rights.
An interim report – that is what an autobiography is.