There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.

Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the beginning of the end.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.

Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.