She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

If you're reading this, I hope God opens incredible doors for your life this year. Greatness is upon you. You must believe it though.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

The higher the better. It's more about an attitude. High heels empower women in a way.

Selfless giving does not imply giving everything up - it's simply having a good time.

Children with healthy mothers are much more likely to survive childhood, attend school and live healthy, productive lives.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.

When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.

It's the procedures in and for themselves that interest me. The picture isn't really necessary.

Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

Never let the mud puddle get lost in the poetry because, in many ways, the mud puddle is the poetry.