Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

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.

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

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.

Knowledge without love is worse than ignorance. Action without love is madness...

With the possible exception of clothes, beauty salons and Frank Sinatra, there are few subjects all women agree upon.

Life's greatest challenge are the manifestations of our dreams.

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.

Do one act of kindness each day of the year and change 365 lives.

I wonder if there were any goths in gothic times. They're like: You look completely appropriate. You don't look stupid or lonely at all.

The only way you will advance spiritually is through humility.

Democracy needs to start with an open Presidential debate. So come on out and let's take back the promise of our democracy.

Give me, kind heaven, a private station, a mind serene for contemplation.

The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.