a good deal of childhood is strong stuff for adults and totally unsuitable for children.

Nothing stands still, except in our memory.

You're very old, aren't you?""Just as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

The most important skill for a new recruit from university will be the ability to learn.

Christmas is Christ love for mankind.

Life is like a flowing river. Just like the speed of time, it will never come back.

The problem was the mask... couldn't be taken off... so much time has been on my face...

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; We are happy now because God wills it.

For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer.

I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in.

I had rather be in hell with Christ, than be in heaven without him.

I think the eyeball is the same, [in] an American or African. The problem is the same, the treatment is the same. Yet why should there be so much variation in quality and in service?