Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

I write about romance and passion to savour love twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

It seems to me that you won't have had a proper series of adventures, unless you've gone through thick and thin.

Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'

Having confidence is so important, because how you see yourself, is how others will see you too.

Be not glad at the misfortune of another, though he may be your enemy.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.

Speed is a way to escape consciousness and just act.

The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.

I've been getting my reel together. I think they are looking at me more as an actress because I have a lot of potential and a lot of skills.