[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.

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.

What lies behind us may be mighty. What lies before us may be mightier. But what lies within us is the mightiest of all! Christ within us is the hope of Glory!

Loving yourself is the most fulfilling and beautiful love that life has to offer.Unfortunately, we're all looking to love someone else..we're all looking to be loved by someone else, first.

Smartass Disciple: Master, where is exactly the edge of this universe ?Master of Stupidity: Edge is wherever the absence of universal gravity.

Warning: Okay, okay…stop asking. They get their story. Happy now?

Speaking of the motto of the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print:" It is hard to think of any group of seven words that have aroused more newspaper controversy.

If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.

I really want to do more mature, artistic, twisted, edgy films. That is my goal.

The most human thing about us is our technology.

I think people are destined for something incredible if we don't wipe ourselves out, but I think we're going to wipe 90 percent of ourselves out.

When you're directing, you're right at the coal face, always exhausted, often emotional - and I'll enjoy being a couple of steps back from that and simply helping where I can.