Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

Life’s product should be made intentionally and consciously

Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.

But the fact is, as one grows close to death, the only thing that matters is family. I hope you can see that.

Perhaps we can recognize our way out of patterns rather than repeating our way out of them.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning and transformation.

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love.

Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.

It definitely deserved an Oscar, but not a Golden Globe.