As yet we use our media only for selling things - including, of course, political candidates. What will happen when someone masters the art of selling souls?

Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm.

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.

Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.

We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.