With a time-based medium like theater or film, you can't have the audience getting restless in their seats. They're stuck there on their bums; you have to pay enormous attention to pace and you can't lose your way.

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just let's you get on with it.

Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

If you have written something that the film people want, like a book, it does give you a way in.