The most important thing to strive for in life is some kind of personal and professional achievement. Not as a man or a woman, but as a person.

I sometimes read in a gossip column that I was at a party when I was in Europe at the time. It sometimes feels I've got a Doppelganger somewhere.

Sometimes you have to find the passion. It comes from the inside... Everyone has to find it for themselves.

The '90s are really the 'Sex and the City' woman, and I think, right now, the new contemporary woman is the 'Lipstick Jungle' woman.

Well in the book Carrie was my alter ego. In real life, Sarah Jessica and I don't look anything alike. But people do say that we sound alike. Sarah Jessica is an adorable girl and she is very funny.

Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.

The most important thing to strive for in life is some kind of personal and professional achievement. Not as a man or a woman, but as a person.

The joke that I make is that there are instances on the TV series that happen to me, - except on Sex and the City they always make it better or worse than real life and I am actually saying that in a joking way.

Well I actually do have a country house in Connecticut with a population of 3,000. Like, how small is that? I spend a lot of time there - I write up there. So I kind of have the best of both worlds and I love going up there.

'Lipstick Jungle' was on the air for 20 episodes - I loved 'Lipstick Jungle.'

Even as a kid, I never liked breakfast. I just don't like to eat then. I like to get up and work. I think sticking a whole bunch of carbohydrates in your stomach in the morning is probably the worst way to begin the day.

Growing up, nobody I knew even knew a writer. So it was a big adventure and something that I've wrestled with my whole life. I think it's a journey worth taking, really finding out who you are and what you do well.

I actually don't shop very much. I have a tendency to rotate a few pairs of ripped jeans and an old cashmere sweater.

I have a house in the Connecticut countryside where you'll always find me, summer or winter.

I love things that are old and glittery, that come with layers of glamour and past lives.

I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.

I wish I was one of those persnickety types who buys guidebooks and studies them, but I don't have the inclination or time. I'm more of a 'get on the plane, arrive at the destination and see what happens' kind of traveler.

I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.

I'm the kind of person who would have liked to have lived at the Plaza. I love crystal chandeliers and gold leaf, velvets and mirrors, Oriental rugs and marble.

I've always been fascinated by young women who come to New York. The characters in 'Lipstick Jungle' were once young women who came to New York and we see their early experiences through flashbacks.

If I'm with a man, is that going to prevent me from achieving my goal? What sacrifices will I have to make in terms of being myself, if I'm with a man? Something that young women find out really quickly is that when you start dating, all of a sudden you're supposed to have a role. You're not allowed to just be yourself.

My decorating and renovation skills are nil - indeed, I once used a shower curtain from Pottery Barn as 'window dressing.'

My parents had a great marriage. Interestingly, it made it harder for me in relationships because I knew what a good relationship looked like.

The key to life is your attitude. Whether you're single or married or have kids or don't have kids, it's how you look at your life, what you make of it. It's about making the best of your life wherever you are in life.

The reality about being economically dependent on someone else usually doesn't work out for women in the end. It's about being an adult and being responsible for your life. Most women have to work, so let's just get on with it.

The women I know who have children and have careers, they seem to be very happy. They love their children and they love their jobs. But happiness comes out of being willing to do your work in your twenties to find out who you are, what you love.

You don't have to do everything by the time you're 30. Or 40. All you need is a work ethic. It's what allows you to push through moments of disappointment and self-doubt and fear.

Karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch.

Rule number one Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you you have a friend whos in crisis

A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling but the music is something Ive never heard discordant and haunting and insistent the kind of music that demands you dance.

I don't go to parties to meet men. I go to parties to stand in a corner and watch people.

Retribution is tricky. . . . The insult isn't usually worth the risk of punishment. And eventually one learns that karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch.

Some secrets are better left at that as secrets.

Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.

Thank goodness for the first snow. It was a reminder - no matter how old you became and how much you'd seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.

You choose the end of the summer to fall in love with this guybecause secretly, you don't want it to last.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.

Dissatisfaction with possession and achievement is one of the requisites to further achievement.

There is no personal achievement in being born beautiful.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.

My real achievement is my daughter and my three beautiful grandchildren.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.