All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.

It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself.

An early-rising man is a good spouse but a bad husband.

Life is not what one lived, but what One remembers and how One remembers it in order to recount it

When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

Old people, with other old people, are not so old.

Dr Urbino did not agree: in his opinion a Liberal president was exactly the same as a Conservative president, but not as well dressed.