As a writer who championed women with grit and wit.

I would like to be remembered for the quality of my work by people who don’t know me; and by the people who know me I’d like to be remembered for being good company.

Having a few songs that outlive you is a nice way to be remembered.

It’s family, and it’s faith, and it’s friends, and it’s not the glamour of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it’s just that I’m 71 years old now. It’s family, and it’s faith, and it’s friends.

And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.

The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.

The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.

I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.

Imaginative, dull, amiable.

I’ve never read Proust.