So much is lost, he said, in the shipwreck. What remains are fragments, and if you don't hold on to them the sea will take them too.

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.

If people threw away their money as thoughtlessly as they throw away their time, we would think them insane. Yet time is infinitely more precious than money because money can’t buy time.

The heavens declare the glory of God.The heavens declare the majesty King.The heavens declare the marvellous Lord.The heavens declare the mighty Saviour.

Do not dwell on the past. Focus on the precious moments and gracious future.

Darkness is but a door, scary not because it opens, but out of fear that it will never close

when whisperedwhat an exquisitesong, it makes-your name.

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

If your potential mate does not have the same perspective that you do then you're going to be lost.

I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.

This is a woman you've known less than twelve hours. It took you a year to pick out a couch, but you're seriously—" “Yes,” Roger said. “She's the one.

[Lev] Tolstoy is not a boy-writer. He's a grown-up. And [Fedor] Doestoeivski is not a boy-writer.