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

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" My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that. "

" I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it. "

" I've had two proposals since I've been a widow. I am a wonderful catch, you know. I have a lot of money. "

" I have two quite large houses, and every cupboard and drawer is stuffed with books. "

" Many people have a profession or a job - most people do, I should think. And they do it. And that's what I did. "

" I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next. "

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

" I don't like the way young people write and talk about the old. I don't like their attitude, which, if they weren't young and therefore bright and vibrant, would be called outdated. "

" '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. "

" In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions. "

" I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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've done the big 12-city tours, and I'm never going to do that again - never. I was younger then. It wears you out, you know. "

" What I mind in modern society very much is the awful lack of grammar. "

" I'm not much of a shoe person, but I love a pair by Bruno Magli that I've had for 10 years. "

" I think we all fear appearing foolish in public. We don't want to be laughed at. "

" I go to the House of Lords in the afternoon and try to walk halfway. I may be thinking about what I'm going to write. It's much more satisfying than sitting in a chair. "

" 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. "

" I don't know that I am fascinated with crime. I'm fascinated with people and their characters and their obsessions and what they do. And these things lead to crime, but I'm much more fascinated in their minds. "

" I don't like slapdash careless prose, and if I saw myself doing it, I would give up writing altogether. "

" I don't mind being distracted. I don't want to sit there in utter silence and type. If the phone rings, I usually answer it, speak for a few minutes and return to writing, or go for a walk in and out of the rooms. I don't mind a break. "

" Reading taught me how to write. "

" I always write about what interests me. "

" I don't think there is a fictional character who resembles me because fictional characters are not real! "

" I never write about a place I don't know. "

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