It makes you love vividly, work intensely, and realize that, in the scheme of things, you really don't have time to sit on the sofa in your undies watching Homes Under the Hammer.

When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.

I want a Zero Tolerance policy on All The Patriarchal Bullshit.

And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

But as the years went on, I realised that what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human.

Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside jigsaws.

The problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose.

The people around you are mirrors, I think. You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That’s how you learn who you are.

Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.

You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening.

You stop talking about things when you’ve worked them out. You’re no longer an observer but a participant. You’re too busy for this bullshit.

Life is now in session. Are you present?

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

There's nothing special about losing your virginity over a toilet.

Confidence is key. Always. Even when we might have messed up.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.

What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval there will be further cruelty.

There has to be this balance of reality for a woman. I don't want to play women who just serve a purpose for the script.

Walk firmly and with joy, without being afraid of stumbling. All your movements are being watched by your allies that will help you when necessary.