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Pearls mean tears.
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Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
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I'm just a story teller.
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I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.
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Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.
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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.'
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My father was in the First World War.
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I have a daughter and two grand-daughters and a great grandson in Africa, in Cape Town.
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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.
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That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
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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.
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When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color bar in their lives.
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Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.
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None of you ask for anything - except everything, but just for so long as you need it.
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It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.
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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.
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Laughter is by definition healthy.
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Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
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I got married and I had children because of the Second World War, as all of us did, exclaiming, 'Oh, no, we are never going to bring a child into this wicked world,' but we had children by the dozen and got married.
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I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.
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It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.
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Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.
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I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.
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The human race has been telling stories since it began.