I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself.

You mustn't forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the little education I have had.

Being by the nature of my upbringing, all my energies having been directed to one channel of activity, crippled from other activities and made helpless even to live.

I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.

I despair of ever writing excellent poetry.

I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do.

Nothing can justify war.

Poetical appreciation is only newly bursting on me.

I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself.

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way.

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.

I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough.

In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.

Pretentious people are like cross stitch pieces, they look fine and pretty at the front. But twisted and messed up at the back.

You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

For me, it's always easy and great to be connected to St. Jude.

If you think you know everything and think you've done everything, I know you're an idiot.

Forget the floor plans. Arrange the furniture where it is the most comfortable and will look best.

For me it was sort of career suicide to work in color, but I did it because I perceived myself from an early stage to be interested in seasonality - the changing of the seasons - that's what I deeply loved.

Crime fiction makes money. It may be harder for writers to get published, but crime is doing better than most of what we like to call CanLit. It's elementary, plot-driven, character-rich story-telling at its best.

The evening praises the day and the morning a frost.

Every life regardless of background or gender has equal value.

My weight fluctuates, like any normal girl, and I have times when I feel insecure.

The villain drives the plot.

My parents had a wonderful marriage, but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirely dependent on my father because that's how it was in those days.

I tend to write more when I travel.

Devote today to something so daring even you can't believe you're doing it.

When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.

Feeling lost? Good! Now you get to walk new paths that lead to much better places.

This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough.

The stitch of a book is its words.

There's a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that's in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I'm looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out.

Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.

Santa Monica Bay is less polluted today than when I first moved to the area in the 1970s, because actions have been taken to avoid putting some of the noxious materials into the sea. I think people are more aware than they once were, the air is cleaner, water generally is, in spite of the fact that there are more people.

When you start believing youre something special then youre not going to be striving to move forward.