The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.

I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.

We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss.

She lacks the core of sureness, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on reflections of herself in others' eyes. She does not dare to be herself.

I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.

One does not learn to suffer less but to dodge pain.

Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. But I am more preoccupied with loving.

My attraction to drugs is based on an immense desire to annihilate awareness.

Our age has need of violence, " he writes. And he is violence.

The relief of opening one's hand and letting go was immense. But soon after, I tightened again. A desire for revenge, a strange revenge.

Do you have regrets that we were so overwhelmed? Do you ever wish to live those hours over again and differently, with more confidence.

I thought you might supply some tendernessI lackedBut out of all the things I offered you took mybreath awayand now I want it back

I'd always liked her in a way I never had to think about, like the fact of my own hands.

The most admirable quality among people is when we pause and think of something to say, without ripping others to shreds (even if they deserved it).

I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.

My business is staunching blood, and feeding fainting men.

When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.

The best revenge is living well without you.

When you read enough stories about people who have been through different levels of trauma, and it doesn't matter what the history is, trauma is trauma, there's always this freeing of the spirit.

My dad is this very sensible guy who never let me feel that anything was beyond my station.

It can never be bad to have a foundation as a man - a black man - in a time when women are dying for men. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men.