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" I don't want to marry anybody, but I certainly wouldn't want to marry a bad novelist. "

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" I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader. "

" Ford Maddox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' is my favourite novel. I first read it in the 1950s and have read it about 20 times since. It's possibly the best-constructed book in the English language. "

" While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen. "

" It sounds awful and sort of goody two-shoes, but I never eat between meals. "

" I was a child, and in 1942, I was evacuated to the Cotswolds with my mother, who was a teacher - she went with her school. I lived in one house in the village, and my mother was in the vicarage. "

" I started by writing short stories, but they weren't very good; I tried them on various magazines, and none of them was published. People were nicer then about turning you down, and so I didn't lose heart - I kept on writing and wrote a lot of books, one or two of which I finished, and others I didn't. "

" You don't knock television, even if you don't always like what they make of your work. It makes all the difference between being an also-ran writer and very famous. "

" People want to marry me for companionship. No thanks! I've got my cats for that! "

" I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. "

" I never was religious, really, but I'm very interested in religion. "

" I have a soft spot for charities that help children. "

" 'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me. "

" I never carry a notebook while walking around London. I just pick those things up. I'm very good at quizzes. "

" Reading taught me how to write. "

" I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while. "

" My mother was a Swede who grew up in Denmark. When I go there, I visit the street where she grew up and look at her house, which is still there, and the snowberry bush, from which she ate some berries and had to have her stomach pumped. "

" I don't care for people who are given peerages who have paid for them. I think it happens, and I don't like that. "

" I'm very fond of Tennessee Williams' plays, and when my husband and I went to New Orleans in the late 1970s, we saw 'A Street Car Named Desire.' "

" The old detective story that's got a really complicated motive doesn't apply to mine. "

" Wexford started off as a very conventional, tough cop and not a very original character because I had no idea I was writing a series, of course. I had no idea I'd created a series character. "

" I'm a very bad Christian, but I am a Christian. I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. And socialist, well yes, of course, it's not a fashionable word, but I am very much of the Left. "

" I think that all women, unless they are absolutely asleep, must be feminists up to a point. "

" I don't want to be a fusty old lady writer. "

" I've never met a murderer as far as I know. I would hate to. "

" Hugh Grant will always be associated with his scandal, and so will Max Mosley. "

" I really am not affected by the tragic aspects of my books. "

" I am curious about people. I want to know their secrets... because I am the last person to whom I would tell a secret; people tell me their secrets. "

" The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt. "

" I always write about what interests me. "

" I always know what I'm going to write before I sit down. "