I can still hear my mother wailing over some new kitchen crisis, "Oh God," and my father answering cozily from the silo, "Were you calling me, dear?

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.

Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.

I spot a fly floating on the surface of the water, its little legs pumping madly as it fights to keep itself afloat. I know that feeling.

Good performance is about the capacity to focus and concentrate.

Promises are worse than lies. You don't just make them believe, you also make them hope.

why are we so monumentally slow?

If God is the DJ, then Life is the dance floor; Love is the rhythm and You are the music.

I've turned it into the constant pursuit of natural and healthy living, which is much more than just exercise and how you eat. It's a way of life.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

I have three closets in my bedroom.