It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.

It is horrid to smirk.

When someone loves you it's like having a blanket all round your heart.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

I like you very much. Just as you are.

It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals.

Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss

One must not live one's life through men but must be complete on oneself as a woman of substance.

No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.

Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding: both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society.

It's rather fun writing a female spy, because she has so much more kit. Bond never carried a hair dryer or a makeup bag. And he certainly didn't wear an uplift bra.

I now let go of worn out things, worn out conditions, and worn out relationships. Divine order is now established and maintained in me and in my world.

My parents always knew I was hopeless at everything else, I was fortunate in that I was backed all the way. I came to it late and only because I thought there'd be loads of women and drinking!

In the end, a theory is accepted not because it is confirmed by conventional empirical tests, but because researchers persuade one another that the theory is correct and relevant.

I feel like you don't have to go through jail, that's not part of bein' a man.

Today everything must be easy and it mustn't take time ... ready meals. Powdered hot chocolate and instant coffee ... Living takes time. We need to give each other time.

There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment.

Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.

Despite what people might think, I'm not interested in being dark all the time. I'm actually searching for some kind of light, and I'm always very happy when I can achieve that.

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

In excess altercation, truth is lost.