A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

Work hard. "Suit yourself, then you'll know at least one person is pleased.

Empathy is the key to negotiating and resolving conflict.

Everybody's got one killer story. It doesn't take talent to tell that story, it just takes experience.

You could care enough to keep a secret, but you could care enough to tell one, too.

I'm not unfaithful, darling. I've plenty of faults but I'm very faithful. You'll be sick of me I'll be so faithful.

She took my hand and pulled me after her, her shoulders giving off a sweet peppermint concoction that the bodies of young women sometimes produce to make my life more difficult.

Love without end, hath no end, says the Spaniard: (meaning, if it were not begun on particular ends, it would last).

The best creed we can have is charity toward the creeds of others.

So… um… what’s the, er, date? You know, the due date for the little monster.

I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.