What sets Iris Stevenson apart is her success in a system that in no way supports her - with the hardest possible children to convert.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.
It's true that I have a strong social sensibility, because - bah, because I raised thre children on my own, and I know the difficulties that can represent. All of that makes it appear that there's a difference between Jean-Marie Le Pen's program and mine. But the big ideas are the same.
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
That's what it's about, how society changes people but people can also change society. It only takes a few people to do things and help themselves instead of sitting around on their asses. She has a very global outlook on life and all sorts of things.
The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.
In time, she learned to develop her own opinion of the people that she worked for, and she got stronger. Think she's now much stronger. In the beginning she wanted to believe she was strong but sometimes she faltered.
I'm strictly for Stevenson. I don't dig the intellectual bit, but I'm telling you, man, he knows the most.
Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both overestimate the other's power - and underestimate their own.
Adlai Stevenson has a genius for saying the right thing, at the right time, to the wrong people.
My character in 'True Grit' would set these goals for herself that seemed near impossible, but to her they were possible. She was never going to believe anything else other than that.