Reading time is precious. Don't waste it. Reading bad books, or books that are wrong for a certain time in your life, can dangerously turn you off the activity altogether.

You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

[Children] would have messed up my apartment. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books.

The secret is that there is no secret.

Only a country that feels invulnerable can afford political turmoil as entertainment.

Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water.