I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

The only thing I really, really want is for the U.S. to win again. Just to win another team gold. And, of course I would really want to win an all-around gold.

Have fun in your command. Don't always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you've earned it, spend time with your families.

I live for makeup and I like wine. These are my truths!

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.

A birthday:-and now a day that rose With much of hope, with meaning rife- A thoughtful day from dawn to close: The middle day of human life.

I love this mansion, though it is too many windows ...to open halfway each morning ...to close halfway each night.

The seeds of first instructions are dropp'd into the deepest furrows.

Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

If we define risk as 'the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome,' inaction is the greatest risk of all.