After my hip operation, I had to cut out butter, which I loved, and salt. I no longer eat desserts with lots of cream, and I've cut right back on alcohol.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

The typewriter is indeed my passport into a world otherwise barred to me and my kind.

Expansion of character is connected to expansion of destiny.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.

We're not lost. We're locationally challenged

The person who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age.

What moves me in art is how we question who we are as people.

I'm not interested in attacking, I'm interested in astonishing.

Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.