Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I was able to leave a place and still remain myself.

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.

Knowing one day, I will be gone, makes me live fuller life.

That which does not kill us has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.

It's easy to focus on the things that divide us. Sometimes too easy.

It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any otherplace.

Is all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the golden gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?

And that just shows you how important the car is in Formula One Racing.

I find that different types of music are good for certain activities.

Serious journalism need not be solemn.

I was raised in this society so you can't expect me to be a perferct person cause Ima do what Ima do.