Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

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.

Nothing is so rewarding than the patience that you take to go over the ramps of life. They may slow you down, but you are an unstoppable hero. Keep driving!

Everyone makes a greater effort to hurt other people than to help himself.

I'm a very stubborn woman and I'm from a very stubborn family of headstrong women. I have sisters, so the women rule the coop in my house.

The I Cing is a study in duality and what lies beyond duality.

You can't force someone to see the truth, just like you can't force a blind man to see.

Never hear what a jackal-speaking person thinks, especially what they think about you.

Islam is a dangerous religion.

Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work.

For every Seaman of Industry and Ingenuity, is not only a Navigator, but a Merchant, and also a Soldier.