Happiness is knowing and appreciating what you've got. I am very, very, very grateful for what, to me, is dead easy.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

Trust can be broken in just a few seconds, but it will only heal after years

the gravity of wound to fist

Each moment in time we have it all even when we think we don't.

Trust your landmark and run through the smoke. It's going to open up eventually.

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand.

I'm attracted to Ferraris and Bentleys, but I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to own one of those.

The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance

You can accept reality, or you can persist in your purpose until reality accepts you.