It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.

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.

Personal discipline is a most powerful character quality and one worthy of dedicating your life to nurturing.

In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average.

A Sense Of Outrage Is Essential For The Entrepreneurial Spirit. I Think Discontentment Drives You To Want To Do Something About It. And My Outrage Came Very Early On.

The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

I've done enough of this that I can tell early on if it's going in the wrong direction or not.

Some people want to have controversy between the races.

I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.

I used to drum on the table at school. I think a handful of my school reports say that they thought I might have some kind of ADD.

Who knows what goes on in the mind of a cat?

By trying to make things easier for their children, parents can make things much harder for them.