He turns to the painting. "I fear Mark was right." "Who is Mark?" "A silly little boy who runs after George Boleyn. I once heard him say I looked like a murderer." Gregory says, "Did you not know?

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.

Tolerance cannot seduce the young.

No cross, no Christian

Luce blushed. "Then what kind of angel are you?""I'm sort of in between gigs right now, " Daniel said.

When I'm in London, Claridge's is a great favourite. I'm a big fan of art deco architecture and the rooms are extraordinary.

Life gives you plenty of time to do whatever you want to do if you stay in the present moment.

The flower of #‎ consciousness needs the mud out of which it grows.

In the world of diplomacy, some things are better left unsaid.

If you want to be your own master ... always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

O kindle the fire of happiness ! Therein I shall see The door of friendliness, The room of greatness And the palace of godness. I shall see, I shall see.