Writing, more than any other art, is indexed to the worthiness of the self because it is identified in peoples minds with emotion.

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

The gods are blind and men see only wha they wish.

Spirituality and spiritual life give us the strength to love.

You don't write a song to sit there on a page. You write it to sing it.

Every act, every deed of justice and mercy and benevolence, makes heavenly music in Heaven.

I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day and the next year, and the year after that.

I regret the fact that Saddam [Hussein] didn't have weapons of mass destruction that we thought. I don't regret removing him from power.

Or perhaps it is some combination of spirit and desire, love and hope, some alchemy that we each possess and can put to use, if we first know where to look without flinching.

I don't much like 'Wonderwall,' but the effect that song has on people, I can't deny it.

I've been fired from a situational comedy with a script they wrote specifically for me because of my voice.

A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.