My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.

Life does not acommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.

No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.

Difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.

I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth - a morsel - and you.

Is life a pregnancy? That would make death a birth.

Anger must be the energy that has not yet found its fight channel.

We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it wouldn't be discovery.

Wear an unusual accessory to complete your outfit.

I'm good at exploring roofs. You never know when that kind of thing comes in useful.

I've always been schizophrenic; I've never been interested in limiting myself.

When you are trying to move mountains you want-and need-people on your side who want to move them with you.

Your enemies are people too, and maybe they don't have to be enemies if they're that much like you.

I don't really have anything against Will Young or Gareth Gates.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

Our century is a brutal thinker.

Now is the time to be doing, now is the time to be stirring, now is the time to amend myself.