We're working-class people, which means we don't get rich or have maids. Be content with what you are and what you have.

My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow

I want to know what they look like, their height, and colouring, physique and speech pattens.

There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.

If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do I tell you!

I hate being on my best behavior. It brings out the absolute worst in me.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more.

What was sleep? A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance?

Belief doesn't rest on proof or existence...it rests on faith...without faith there is nothing.

That's the purpose of old age... To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.

The fictitious kleptomaniac's only crime was stealing imaginations

Shame comes in different doses.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

What, do you think that feminism means you hate men?

No man can be satisfied with his attainment, although he may be satisfied with his circumstances.

In blissful dream, in silent night, There came to me, with magic might, With magic might, my own sweet love, Into my little room above.

Let first the onion flourish there, Rose among roots, the maiden-fair, Wine-scented and poetic soul Of the capacious salad bowl.

At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

In 13 years I've come to the conclusion that I need to play for second or third place.

The closure of the book is an illusion largely created by its materiality, its cover. Once the book is considered on the plane of its significance, it threatens infinity.