This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

You think you have the amount of money that is your credit limit. We're just wired to think that, you know? Until the bill arrives - a sobering moment - you think you're richer than you are.

No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do too badly by one another, we did as well as most.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

Pink is supposed to weaken your enemies, make them go soft on you, which must be why it's used for baby girls. It's a wonder the military hasn't got on to this.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.