It's a pretty brutal process, having a baby.

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

Do not wait until you are rich before you start working for the Lord

It's easy to get wrapped up in sharing everyday life with a partner. It's fun to get lost in love and romance. It's the best. But holding on to yourself while doing that is the most important thing.

The absent are easily refuted.

A sustainable human community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

I don't like the act of talking; it makes me slightly light-headed.

I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration.

Drop the whole subject and put it out of your mind and let your subconscious do its thing.

Often it's the deepest pain which empowers you to grow into your highest self.

When alone with God, be alone with Him.

The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.