You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

We all have scars & deep pain. It'swhat makes us human & vulnerable.

You are not expected to know, but you are expected to wish to know.

Jesus says we are blessed when we are hated, ostracized, insulted, and ridiculed on earth, because of Him.

He loved me and didn't want me hurt. What was worse, he didn't even understand that I had the right to be hurt.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

Children consider disliking their parents natural, but if the dislike is returned, they are outraged.

There is always one way to make anybody do anything - the trouble is to find it.

I like it when someone tells me: 'I don't agree.' This is a true collaborator. When they say 'Oh, how great, how great, how great,' that's not useful.

At Baalbek Nuts I bought pistachios from the Lebanese owners, who answered my request for their thoughts on the war with the typically Lebanese response of no problem. It's a lie, as we all knew.