My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

I always love writing about children.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

I'm no lyrical stylist, you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

You can't stop suffering, you can't stop terrible things from happening, but you can bear witness... The least us reporters can do is go there and tell their stories.

I'm so sick of mermaid dresses, trains, borrowed bling-bling, and a pose.

Each strikeout brings me closer to my next homerun.

They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.

The glory of a nation and an age is always the work of a few great persons, and it disappears with them.

If a company is distributing images and video then obviously they need bandwidth solutions. But if they are looking to the mass market then they must develop WAP sites.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

China is stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking into our computers, counterfeiting our goods.

I like to think that with me, what you see is what you get, and you can like or dislike it, it's up to you, but it's straight. That's something that I pride myself on.

Love is selfless. The key is giving up yourself.