You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice.

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.

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay hands on everything they can get.

Marriage is a great institution but I'm not ready for an institution.

Now the frosty stars are gone: I have watched them one by one Fading on the shores of Dawn. Round and full the glorious sun Walks with level step the spray Through his vestibule of Day.

If peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace.

No language on earth speaks as comprehensively as photography, always providing that we follow the chemical and optic and physical path to demonstrable truth, and understand physiognomy.

He flushed, the colour dark against his pale skin. 'I mean. Tessa Gray, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?' Jem.

Let's all start wearing bolo ties, and when they become hip again, we'll all say we were kidding.

The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.

Trying to change social, national, or global realities without working on human consciousness means there is no serious intention.

Listen,' he said. 'It's important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.