Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism.

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.

A writer walks in nature to wonder.

It is not always necessary to search for the cause behind everything, because every cause is unfounded. A cause only looks like a cause from a certain viewpoint.

There is no such thing as recreational drug use.

To stay here and disobey God - I can't afford to take the consequence. I would rather go and obey God than to stay here and know that I disobeyed.

Oh, Claire, ye do break my heart wi' loving you.

God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.

I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

I do believe that almost everything I do is based on my feelings, not on my intellect. Though But we won't chase ourselves up the particular sentiment, or we'll get lost.

Through the grace of the Almighty Power, it is sure to manifest itself in time.