A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other.

The past is never where you think you left it.

Love must be learned and learned again; There is no end.

You waste life when you waste good food.

You shouldn't side-step suffering if you have to go through it to get where you're going.

Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.

What we need now is endless courage.

Each generation must get on the same old merry-go-round, only disguised in a fresh coat of paint.

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life

Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.

I will never forget the feeling of walking into my home, a place that while drifting helpless in the middle of the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would ever see again.

Regret is such a pointless emotion, don't you agree?

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

Grace Portolesi is a strong, assertive passionate young woman and she is precisely the sort of person I want in my cabinet and she will have a senior role.

First you buy me a mocha. Then you let me help you hide a body. Now you take me to a biker clubhouse. Best. Day. Ever.

As I've evolved in life my writing process has taken a turn. I'm inspired by everyday life. I could be in the middle of something and hear a commercial. I enjoy songs writing themselves.

Count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.