I didn't appear to need anyone: I could do it all myself. I could do everything. I was both halves: did that mean I was whole?

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.

I am a trained professional liar. Do not read me as a textbook.

The past is as important as the future, but we only live in the here and now.

To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people.

The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

This is a choice I made 26 years ago when I joined the magazine. Vogue was in Italian but I wanted to speak to everyone so I thought of creating images that were made to talk.

It's too easy to do a patriotic-themed show to crawl into people's hearts and minds.

I mean that much more than wiser beings from beyond the stars bringing us enlightenment or death or salvation, we are likely to find ourselves the wisest beings on the scene.

When you're a Scientologist it's like the movie Goodfellas, where the gangsters hang out with only other gangsters. We only hung out with each other, so we knew we were saving the world.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

There are only three things in the world, one is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.