It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, t….

Screenwriting is an opportunity to fly first class, be treated like a celebrity, sit around the pool and be betrayed..

She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching ….

I like to think that each book I start is a completely new departure But I’ve learned that whatever you do, readers will have no difficulty assimilat….

Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?.

Dying in unfamiliar surroundings miles away from home, it cannot possibly be good. There is a great sadness about that I think..

It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atoneme….

No one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath Briony bed, but no one wanted to know..

He was looking at her with amused suspicion. There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather s….

What I've discovered and really confirmed to myself is that opera really likes loud colours, and you need something bold, something savage, unpredict….

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the f….

Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not given the matter a moment's thought, and that would take time..

But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and und….

One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done ….

She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore..

London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble; we had severe energy problems; we were un….

Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all dec….

She bent her finger and then straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when….

I'm quite good at not writing..

We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth.

In Leon's account of his life, no-one was mean-spirited, no-one schemed or lied or betrayed; everyone was celebrated at least in some degree... Leon ….