I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.

Look up on a starry night, and you will see the majesty and power of an infinite Creator.

I'm a good person and I don't think I'll be left on my own. I don't know when I'll meet a man - I think I'm rushing it. But I am tired of working and not having someone.

When the mind is silent and quiet, then inner energies wake up and work miracles on your behalf without any conscious effort on your part.

A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him.

Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.

At the end of my trial, I was rather hoping the judge would send me to Australia for the rest of my life.

We make the kind of movies we like to watch. I love to laugh. I love to be amazed by how beautiful it is. But I also love to be moved to tears. There's lots of heart in our films.

Acting is about enhancing your life, not representing something that's missing.

When you're an actor and there's no music, you have to sort of bring it all yourself.

Liberals attempt through judicial activism what they cannot win at the ballot box.