The most important thing to realize is that everyone is capable of telling a story.

I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.

I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters.

Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.

I'm an escapist kind of writer.

Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is confident ducks. They take charge of their lives.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

If you don't go to a dance you can never be rejected but you'll never get to dance either.

Because I saw my parents relaxing in armchairs and reading and liking it, I thought it was a peaceful grown-up thing to do, and I still think that.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

A man of real purpose puts his faith in himself always. Sometimes he refuses even to put his faith in the gods. So from time to time, he falls into error.

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.

I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.

Natural gas is a feedstock in basically every industrial process.

Lucky risk takers use hindsight to reinforce their feeling that their gut is very wise. Hindsight also reinforces others' trust in that individual's gut.

My husband was getting his sea legs-rereading Joseph Conrad with a side order of C S Forester.

If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love.

I have to say, that I am delighted that Secretary [Hillary] Clinton month after month after month seems to be adopting more and more of the positions that we have advocated.

All natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.

Does an artist truly need to understand her times in order to create? I'm not sure. We're all sitting in a context. It's a market.