People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

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.

Courage is living by the free will that one creates for themselves, not the life of monotony determined by another.

Make a new friend by picking up a book and getting to know it!

Christmas is a stocking stuffed with sugary goodness.

The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.

I think all minority audiences watch movies with hope. They hope they will see what they want to see. That's why nobody really sees the same movie.

I have a really big mouth, I have a lot of opinions and I will be heard.

The Stones also still have a huge following. Mick Jagger leaps around like a crazy dude. And Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts are playing great too.

And thus we rust Life's iron chain Degraded and alone: And some men curse, and some men weep, And some men make no moan: But God's eternal Laws are kind And break the heart of stone

I woke to a bucket of ice water in my face. “Sadie! Get up,” Zia said. “God!” I yelled. “Was that necessary?” “No,” admitted Zia.

Dangle something in front of the camera. Get something surprising to be released.