“One that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.”

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.

If poisons were ponies, I’d put my money on cyanide.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.

I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Except I’m aware that as a writer you can’t get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

To be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren’s hands.

I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material – something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instance or oatmeal.

And I had long ago become accustomed to being called ‘Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.

It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest.

I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions.

We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.

The most important thing a woman can do for another is to illuminate her actual possibilities.

If they think that there’s a lot of racism going on then there’s another Hip Hop artist who’s gonna come out and speak their mind.

None of these situations are identical. You cannot take one set of issues from one country and apply it to another.

Behind all art is an element of desire…Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art.

The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

What it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.