And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.

At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.

Pulling at the hem of my emotion was the creeping sense that it might well take until 2036 for this child in my arms to feel a fraction of what I already felt for her.

It's easy to love kids who make you feel competent.

Pel-i-cans, their beaks hold more than their bellies can.

Journeying through secret doors, curving corridors, and connecting rooms into the mountain was like being digested by the different organs of a deity.

I loved my family so much when I was growing up, my parents, my sister. I wanted to be able to give them everything they ever dreamed of.

I have a massage when I want to relax. I love being pampered. I love island massages when you're outside in the fresh air.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family's asleep and I'm alone, I think about the next day's writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.

What matters most in politics is personality. It's not issues; it's not image. It's who you are and what you represent.

It is a known fact that the sheep that give us steel wool have no natural enemies.

Never interrupt me when I'm eating a banana.

Even now, I want to keep my amateur spirit, to spend my time, to be in the sport with all my heart.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.