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

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.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

Trust. And be trusted.

It’s always nice to hear that you’re appreciated for all that you do.

We have the insight and the tools to identify and bring to fruition the dormant talent that our artists possess. Favored Nations will be branded as the home base for inspired musical talent.

A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

Subversion is what I do.

I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.

You can always buy something in English, you can't always sell something in English.