That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.

You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.

New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.

Luckily for you, you can close the book The Postman Always Rings Twice and break out of it, and James M. Cain can't. I can't think of any redeeming feature he has, but he's extremely compelling.

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges : the pox and Christianity.

I live for makeup and I like wine. These are my truths!

A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.

I've always been more of the athlete in my family, but Bella [Hadid] is just good at - when she needs buckle down for like two weeks and be in [the gym] every day, she's really good at that.

I think it's important that the rest of the world know that we're not all the same and that we don't all have the sort of arrogance it feels like they're perceiving from our leaders.

I absolutely love Vancouver! One, because the city is beautiful and very easily walkable, and two, because the city keeps giving me work!

As an actress, emotions are my business, my stock-in-trade. As such, I've dealt with them nearly all my life.

Anyone can wear any color. The question is about finding the right shade. There is a momentary trend to dark colors because when the financials are not that great, people go for black, navy and grey.

Hope... is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for who so hopes has within him the gift of miracles.

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.