'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon

Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.

The key to growing up well, is being tough enough.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS.

Perhaps it's simply the dual nature of marriage, the proximity of violence and love.

Eternity is not just looking to the future and our place with God in Heaven, but it is looking at our Eternity as if it were only moments away.

The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin.

I think Joan's advice would be: always know more than anyone else, always be discreet as possible. And never cry at work.

Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.

A man, when he wishes, is the master of his fate.

I think the first trick to writing a feminist work is to write plenty of women. That way you get to write characters, instead of worrying about paradigms.

Rich people believe in themselves. They believe in their value and in their ability to deliver it. Poor people don't. That's why they need "guarantees."

Fate is a manifestation of natural causes. That's it. It's not a conscious entity. It has no plan.