I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

While the heart beats, hope lingers.

Dan explains the trip’s itinerary, which includes trekking through the jungle, boating down the Amazon River, and to my surprise, three Ayahuasca ceremonies.

Luck is not chance it's toil fortune's expensive smile is earned.

More fun than a frog in a glass of milk.

Reading is important.

I've always been interested in the rest of the world. My family is very eccentric; my parents have always been very supportive of travel and doing whatever I thought I needed to do.

A tune's like a staircase - walk up on it.

Do not listen to those who say there is nothing you can do to the very real and large social and environmental issues of our time.

I just wrapped 'Eclipse' yesterday and the last scene we shot is probably my favorite thus far. I finally got to tell my story, in a very gentle yet elaborate way.