For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt.

Within walking distance of any spot on Earth there's probably more than enough mystery to investigate in a lifetime.

Sexism goes so deep that at first it's hard to see; you think it's just reality.

Fiction is ideally suited to re-creating the important emotional aspects of history.

There is still nothing like equality for women in jobs, in family. There's just an awareness that inequality is not acceptable.

My mirror image always had to be interpreted. And for that I sought my reflection in someone else's eyes.

Being alone for a woman is probably much more scary than for a man. I'm all for getting over our fears by facing them head-on.

Everything is connected. There is no such thing as an island, especially in our world, global village, the whole thing. Pollution from way across the ocean circulates in the air.

Many people spend the ends of their lives alone, and probably a lot of years in the middle of their lives, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience the rewards of solitude.

Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do.

In my books, my idea is always to explore social context and social forces.

To his surprise he...discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something…that you cared about a great deal.

A person has to be by himself a little bit. We weren’t born in a flock. Togetherness drives me out of my mind.

What I lose today I can't make up tomorrow. I have to do it today.

No art that is not in the end understood by the People can live or ever did live a single generation.

I have a coconut oil stick, which I use for everything - on my eye lids to make them shinier, on my lips, and on any dry skin.

Was this normalcy-predictable patterns, the certainty of doing the same thing everyday? Because if so, normalcy was about to make me freak out and start screaming.

Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.

I think when you make a movie, one of your main focuses as a director is to inspire everyone else to give their best. Like manipulation.

Let's live with that small pittance which we have; Who covets more is evermore a slave.

It is time for the government of China to stop holding innocent religious figures in captivity merely for peacefully protesting China's occupation of Tibet.