I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

I always love writing about children.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

I'm no lyrical stylist, you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

Be glad that I haven't take out the pen, the rubber and the pencil once taken... all will die.

In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.

You have to be more discerning, Lily, when experimenting with bondage." He wiggled his eyebrows. "I'd make a great master.

Everybody's got a right to be a sucker ... once.

Custom is the great guide to human life.

No man can feel the iron which enters another man's soul.

I think that there is just a deep and abiding sexism that's part of your life from the moment that you're conscious as a female.

Characterization is not divorced from plot, not a coat of paint you slap on after the structure of events is already built. Rather characterization is inseparable from plot.

I don't have to meet actors. I'm really blessed that I don't have to do all that horseshit.

I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.