You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

Self education is the key to self liberation.

What happens to you when you get older? Do you just forget everything from before you turned eighteen? Do you make yourself forget?

I don't like how I have to always be judged for my weight - I hate that.

Courage is exhilarating.

I always wanted to play baseball and join the circus. Now I have both.

Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.

I find human contact repulsive.

You've got to stop doing all the things that people have tried, tested, and found out don't work...

No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn't love enough?

I will never give up. I am in my 14th year of a 10-day beauty plan.