Small things amuse small minds.
Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel.
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.
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.
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
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. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.
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.
I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.
You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.
As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.
I'm compulsive.
It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.
What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.
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.
