I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

Everything is more whole in the end when you forgo destruction and instead repair, he reasoned. But some things can’t be repaired. His arm can’t be repaired. He will always be broken because of me.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.

The bright side of the planet moves toward darknessAnd the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour, And for me, now as then, it is too much.There is too much world.

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.

When I decided to go into politics I weighed the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it.

The oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

Love exists in powder. Love exists in pills. We are all addicts.

How can there be too many typefaces in the world? Are there too many songs, too many books, too many places to go?

My love is thaw'd; Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was