"You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I..." — Doris Lessing

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.