Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be.

He who climbs a cliff may die on the cliff, so what? Always a risk-taker by nature, now I became one by intent.

In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back in. This was not a spectacular event. The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

[a]nd the Pig Man came in from Waitomo and swore that if Louisa didn't marry him he'd damn well vote Labour at the next ele

And when he got home he started on Mumma. He hated her then, because in her fatness and untidiness and drabness she reminded him of what he himself was when he was sober.

What has being a girl to do with anything if a person in properly qualified?' ... 'It's what you call prejudice, ' she said.

Then she said, with piteous defiance, "If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.

My dad is a much more flamboyant character than I am. I think that's why I couldn't see myself going into straight acting. I always just felt daft.

The heart is what is important." There is nothing more vulnerable, nothing more corruptible than the human mind; nor is there anything as powerful, steadfast and ennobling.

Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence.

Well, we want to make sure there's not securities fraud.

There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what the untrained eyes consider abominable.

There is no holier spot of ground than where defeated valor lies by mourning beauty crowned

There is the music of Heaven in all things.

I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.

I think in New York we had respect and we would pretty much fill up the places where we went, but I never got the sense that we really were Number 1 here in New York among the Latin crowds.

The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.