I do have one very brutal writing ritual. If I'm working in the morning, I don't allow myself a cup of tea until I've written two paragraphs. It's harsh.

No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.

We happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process...

We are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

Still, there remains so much to relish and remember.

Children, viewed from one angle, are philosophy in motion.

[W]e are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

The tragedy of life is that it comes just once and before you know it, it is gone.

The nice thing about being detained in Canada is it's like being in a Days Inn; it's very clean and very nice.

Everyone wants to go to the party and the red carpet, but my life is 90% the work.

We love the night and it's quiet.

Everybody is great when things are great. It's the 'not great' stuff that matters.

One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.

I think I was pretty much hated in France. The French press ignored me. There was a movement when the children of celebrities faced strong animosity.

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another's woe.

I have to accept the fact that I was putting out records that reviewers were going to get an image from.

Solve global warming, eliminate the nuclear threat, and we will still have to confront the vastness of our species and the way it diminishes, without thinking, all the other species around it.