I think it was Rose Macaulay who said, "A house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived."

She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave.

Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people.

Motherhood is all-encompassing, and in a way, as the mother, you're the star of the household.

As you'll know yourself, there are these moments when you're writing a book when one remark or moment will pull everything together and you'll think, "That's it. I've got what I need."

As other authors have realized, heat can have a strange effect on us, can cause odd chemical reactions in the brain. Heat can bring out secrets; it can change people's personalities.

Why isn't life better designed so it warns you when terrible things are about to happen?

She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in.

The Chilean novelist Isabel Allende says there's no such thing as writer's block, you just need to live a bit more. I try to bear that in mind.

I have two sisters, and I think siblings are always going to be irresistible for novelists. They have been throughout time and they'll continue to be.

It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.

Fake people talk about other people being fake. Real people worry about their business, and no one else's.

Beauty is much more intimidating than brutality.

I don't understand why prostitution is illegal, Selling is legal, f***ing is legal. So why isn't it legal to sell f***ing? Why should it be illegal to sell something that's legal to give away?

I think fans cling to me because I'm a blue-collar guy in a blue-collar city.

The media is supposed to be custodians of the facts and watchdogs of government. They have, for the most part, neglected to be either of those things.

No money changed hands, of course.

I think sharing experiences is a great thing in order to change things in society.

Whether it is considered from the viewpoint of its effect on society, or as one of the expressions of the human spirit, creativity stands out as an activity to be studied, cherished, and cultivated.

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.