I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

We will always have enough reasons to justify what we believe and what we do not believe.

Just a drop in the ocean, " you say, And that may be true, But the ocean wouldn't be as full, If it weren't for you.

Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.

You will always receive what you are equal to.

The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.

Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.

Take out two pieces of paper. One piece of paper, list all the people you know who are adding to your life.

I am a passionate seeker after truth which is but another name for God.

The meaning of life is creative love. Not love as an inner feeling, as a private sentimental emotion, but love as a dynamic power moving out in the world and doing something original.

I sleep with my baby blanket, Kiki, that my nana made for me.