I am a good and interested mother - which has surprised me.

Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.

Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

There is joy in every circumstance.

Every challenge presents a good chance for learning something new.

You know what's the worst? Having realistic, ordinary expectations taken out of your reach by seemingly unrealistic, extraordinary circumstances.

Pride is the rope God allows us all.

Nobody gets married to a clever song, let alone falls in love to one.

If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality.

Love has these three stages, and compassion accordingly has three stages, and both can exist in different combinations.

I really don't worry about what people say or what they have to say or what they think - it just doesn't matter.

There are two impulses in theatre: to be frivolous or to make rules.

The Masonic system represents a stupendous and beautiful fabric, founded on universal purity, to rule and direct our passions, to have faith and love in God, and charity toward man.