All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.

My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.

I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.

I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.

You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy