Laywers, I suppose, were children once.

I just knew I would be a writer. It just seemed the only sensible thing to do.

Somewhere inside we do know everything about ourselves. There is no real forgetting. Perhaps we know somewhere, too, about all there is to come.

I think the most dangerous influence for a young writer is to be treated with cynicism or discouragement.

I gave myself to my children. It happens to some women.

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.

Jane Austen we know never let two men converse alone in any novel because what they said would be unknown to her.

English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

All my life I have felt events to be the result of my own sins.

If you fail an examination, it means you have not yet master the subject. With diligent study and understanding, you will succeed in passing the exams.

The budgets are runnin' low, the streets ain't really got money no more, things are just dryin' up; I just felt like people needed some motivation, so I took 'em "Overtime."

You don't go on "probably" when love and guns are in hand.

I'm trying to listen to my past, listen to what's most deeply going on inside myself, my creative set of fictional characters, a fictional world - to listen to that world, to search.

I didnt grow up around all white people; I never wanted to gentrify hip-hop, Ive never wanted to speak to an all-white audience.

Sexism and racism and homophobia and classism are so naturalized. All these stereotypes make people think it's just normal that straight white men are getting all the breaks.

Surely it is time for Jews, worried over the huge growth of Arabs in Israel, to consider finishing the exchange of populations that began 35 years ago.

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, - To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.

The people who say,"What guarantee do I have?" I walk away. I'll get you later.

Impassioned characters never attain their mark till they have overshot it.