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" I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I. "

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" Things are not quite so simple always as black and white. "

Black And White

" Some people obtain fame, others deserve it. "

" The human race has been telling stories since it began. "

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

" I've worked hard all my life. You have to if you want to get things done. "

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

" 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. "

" Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew. "

" The thing is, I haven't changed at all. "

" We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed. "

" There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't. "

" I never stopped reading. "

" You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it. "

" It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. "

" There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. "

" What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula. "

" Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. "

" I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents. "

" I am your original autodidact. "

" I thought that would go without saying, that if a mother gives up her children, it's very painful. "

" 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. "

" What is a hero without love for mankind. "

" Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so. "

" What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better. "

" 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. "

" I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look at a list and see anything that I want, or almost anything, is like a kind of miracle. "

" In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools. "

" It usually takes me a year to do a book. A year or eighteen months. "

" When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers. "

" The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to their tune. "