You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

Don’t work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.

Don’t give explanation to anyone because who believes you, no need and who do not will not agree.

You are not mine to command. But the choice to kill always means closing the mind to the chance of a living alternative.

Somerset House in London where at one time English vital statistics were kept - birth marriage and death records - was known as the egg factory "where they hatch 'em match 'em and dispatch 'em."

There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.

This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.

Technology has come a long way since PayPal.

I got very interested in attention and awareness and how to achieve certain states through understanding this.

I only like to write shows that I feel like no one has seen before.

For so many centuries women have been suppressed and regarded as inferior. And that of course is not right at all, that we all have buddha-nature - so what's the difference?