In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

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.

A truly successful person is not one who achieves his highest ambitions, but one who enjoys helping others reach theirs.

Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. “You don’t knock now?” “It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered.

The message "Your body isn't good enough" translates in a little girls mind to "YOU aren't good enough." This becomes a core belief that gets passed on to the next generation.

A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

We may be unable to maintain even a semblance of order in our urban schools, which increasingly resemble happy hour in Beirut. But, hallelujah, we sure know how to protect kids from God.

95% of millennials say their friends are the most credible source of product information.

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way.

You know how it is with fathers, you never escape the idea that maybe after all they're right.

The thing that keeps you grounded is doing the thing you love.

A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.