"[Asked "Why do you write?"] A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story t…"

"The comparison to Jane Austen makes me fidget. There is a huge gulf between being great and being good. I know exactl…"

"In ordinary life [...] if we're in love, we still have to go and see old aunts in nursing homes, take the children to…"

"I was born into the Church of England, I'm still in it, and I go to church. It's as natural to me as breathing - you …"

"All the middle-class people I write about would have had nannies and servants in the past, but now we do everything o…"

"I'm no lyrical stylist, you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as i…"

"[On the Aga saga tag being applied to her novels] It's so inaccurate [...] Actually, the novels are quite subversive,…"

"I've done the countryside for decades. The last dog went to paradise in the summer, dear old boy. So it's just me now…"

"Oh I admire untidiness so much. There's something in the emotional carelessness, the freedom of it, that I quietly ap…"

"What I'm trying to do in all these novels is mirror a contemporary preoccupation. I'm not providing any solutions. I'…"