I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference.

A moment passed, perhaps half a second when their faces said what they felt, and then Emma was smiling, laughing, her arms around his neck.

The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same.

An adaptation leads the cinema-goer to the original to find out what they're missing and if they already know the book, it can still illuminate a theme, a character, an idea.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

I am not up to this. I am not capable. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Some part of me is missing, and I cannot do this.