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

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 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.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

Self-leadership always precedes team leadership.

May you never grow too old to believe in magic and fairy tales.

Every means hitherto employed with the intention of making mankind moral has been thoroughly immoral.

The most glorious reason you exist is for the proclamation of the glory of God to the ends of the world. And it's more than having a nice life.

I won't comment on what Bob Dylan said, but I will comment on his receiving the Nobel Prize, which to me is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.

It's going to take a lot of love to make things work out right.

You can make all the birth plans in the world, but at the end of the day - go with the flow.

I don't want to deconstruct what I do.