I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

I always love writing about children.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

I'm no lyrical stylist, you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

So easy to go sailing off this road. A wonder more folks didn't. All that space, waiting.

Life is not a means to an end but a series of experiences. Are you creating your series 'on purpose' ?

Find friends who ALIGN with your destiny & lose friends who ALIENATE you from destiny!

For God's sake, all of you, say spiteful things about me, then I shall know I mean something to you. Don't say surgaries, or I'm done.

How smartly September comes in, like a racing gig, all style, no confusion.

My derring-do allows me to dance the rigadoon around you but by the time I'm close to you I lose my desideratum.

I'm not quite certain how you can force a candidate to stick by the rules.

By God's help, and the intelligent use of their own strong right arms they could accomplish great things.

I don't know, I find that honestly, the stand-up thing in some ways is a little bit of a cliché to carry around, because people don't consider stand-ups really actors.

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.