You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

I always love writing about children.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

I'm no lyrical stylist, you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

Everything has its own time

Whenever you see this much wealth, assume that someone dirtied his hands. Fortunes don't come to saints.

When I first came to Los Angeles, I was a teacher in Compton. I know how in need schools are around the country.

Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

My friends, how desperately we need to be loved and to love. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.

You can take what is handed to you and use it as an excuse to mess up. But I've always handled what was given to me by life. I consider myself lucky. I was never lied to. And I was loved.

Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?

Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.

We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria.