I get quite disappointed that we're still telling stories that I think are problematic in terms of what they're saying about women.

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.

It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.

The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus will never draw attention to himself but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control.

Imagination decides everything.

What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.

And time brings down what is both strong and tall. But plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown, to have so short a date, Is by his hand alone that guides nature and fate.

I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.

All the time I feel I must justify my existence.

We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open