In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.

Women have to do all of the catching up. So we are disengaged and overburdened. Sounds like it is time we ditch the complacent fluoride-in-the-tap-water feminism and get reenergized and reinspired.

If I'm not doing the work I want, I usually suffer a psychological allergic reaction and get ill. It niggles when things get out of my control.

The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.

Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations; it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness.

Judging by the the movie's enduring popularity, the message that stupidity is redemption is clearly what a lot of Americans want to hear.

I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

Never make a principle out of your experience. Allow God to be as creative with others as He is with you.

No, I'm not dying, and I sure... ain't dead.

If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.

My own saying is: 'Create the hype, but don't ever believe it.'