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" I was a nursemaid. And it was pretty boring. "

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" That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. "

" 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. "

" When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia. "

" I never thought of London in terms of possible heroes - of course, there are thousands. It's a very talented city. "

" Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel. "

" Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse. "

" 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. "

" I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story. "

" I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. "

" When there's a war, people get married. "

" I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world. "

" What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If you are a young writer today, it's very hard. "

" Some people obtain fame, others deserve it. "

" I'm compulsive. "

" I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women. "

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

Black And White

" 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. "

" Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary! "

" They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off. "

" I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame. "

" I see every book as a problem that you have to solve. That is what dictates the form you use. It's not that you say, 'I want to write a science fiction book.' You start from the other end, and what you have to say dictates the form of it. "

" 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. "