Hope does not necessarily have to take an object.

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.

I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.

None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime.

I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today?