You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.

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

When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

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.

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.

You know, 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.