I was at a party in 1989 and Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a sofa wondering where the next generation of great British writers would come from. As we talked, it became clear they had never read a word by me.

So, Ryan, back to my Economy model. In motor-vehicle parlance, she's the cloth-seats and plastic-steering-wheel version. But she gets you from A to B.This model comes only in white.My sister-in-law's a lovely black woman from Jamaica and she said to me, she said, Ron! Don't you dare do an Economy black woman. And I love women, I do, and I thought, yeah, show respect. Also, Bridget would knock the shit out of me.

The school song at Accrington High School for Girls was 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,' a terrible choice for an all-girls' school, but one that helped turn me into a feminist. Where were the famous women--indeed any women--and why weren't we praising them? I vowed to myself that I would be famous and that I would come back and be praised.

I don't hate men, I just wish they'd try harder.

I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

Women always bring it back to the personal,' said Handsome. 'It's why you can't be world leaders.''And men never do,' I said, 'which is why we end up with no world left to lead.

I noticed that women have a private language. A language not dependent on the constructions of men but structured by signs and expressions, and that uses ordinary words as code-words meaning something other.