After the door of a woman's heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it.

Love is an orchid which thrives principally on hot air.

Impermanence is the very essence of joy-the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet.

each separate flower has a magic all its own.

I've always thought my flowers had souls.

Silence always gives consent.

When we come to the sundown road, we need all the love we have managed to take with us from the summit of the hill.

A letter has distinct advantages. You can say all you want to say before the other person has a chance to put in a word.

Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry for each other.

The things that are ours cannot be given away, or taken away, or lost. We break our hearts, all of us, trying to keep things that do not belong to us — and to which we have no right.

Heart-aches are forgotten, tears lose their bitterness, and like a leaf of lavendar in a store of linen, so does Memory make life sweet.

Fear must be conquered with faith.

Time cannot be managed. It’s going to pass you by, whether or not you are trying to manage it.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

Almost all thinking people agree that you should not have probability 1 (or 0) for any event, other than one demonstrable by logic, like 2 x 2 = 4.

I always wanted to play Joan of Arc. I've always wanted to do that. Now I'm thinking, 'Maybe there's a story in Joan of Arc's mother!' If I don't hurry up, her grandmother!

As for Gordon Brown - I've described him and Blair as two cheeks of the same arse.

Everyone's life is a mess. Everyone's. We all make mistakes . . . and not just little slip-ups. Major mistakes that hurt us and other people.

We must be courageous but also reasonable. The world admires us for walking a tightrope without falling off. It asks us to keep our balance.

If you play an audiotape of a yawn to blind people, they'll yawn too.

The act, the doing, the taking up of paint and putting it down - the immediate impact upon your psyche or soul that occurs when you do that - has so much danger in it.