Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there's no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

Choice of evils debates always produce extremism - people choose what they hope is the lesser evil, then call it good and demonize the other choice. It will be a challenge for your generation to synthesize - to move beyond Us versus Them, to We.

The problem is huge. We've just added seventy-five million people to the already large proportion of people in the world who are malnourished all the time, whose bodies are being starved.

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.