Mrs Thicknesse and I agreed that a business of his own was probably the only solution for him because he was obviously unemployable.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.

I don't know what people have against Jimmy Carter. He's done nothing.

Enter the story as late as you can.

You get paid and you get venerated and worshipped for pretending to be somebody else.

It's best to make your peace with change, before it makes pieces of you.

So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?

Few fears are rational.

When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down; it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.

I love my fans, I could not be able to do it without you and I would not be here.