Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests.

One of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.

I enjoy going back to work now because cinema is going through an exciting period because young people are now going back to the movie theaters. But things are different though.

To watch THE WAITING ROOM is to wish it would never end. This is human drama at its most intense and universal. The rare film that can change the way you think and see the world.

More men have been defeated by reports than all the steel of all the swords in history.

If you lived in Sheffield and were called Sebastian, you had to learn to run fast at a very early stage.

If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so.