As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.

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.

God helps those who strut their stuff.

unfamiliar things least produces familiarity. Familiarity only gets closer to you when you open your doors to familiar things

For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth.

Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well

I do isometrics in church so while I'm doing my soul some good, I'm doing my body some good, too.

I miss the days when faith was discussed in public and not the most intimate details of our personal lives.

Living and dreaming are two different things - but you can't do one without the other.

You try not to talk about the past too much as an artist. Instead, you focus on the continuity of your work.

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with 'em.

I listen to music a lot, if I need to get into a particular space. I do stretching and breathing, and take time to mostly be quiet and find the stillness. I think that's important.