I never felt any different from anyone else though.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

If you can't return a favor, pass it on.

I never felt any different from anyone else though.

Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.

Every year I teach dozens of students at the University of Birmingham. Most of the students on the gender and sexuality courses are women. I guess this is because the boys don't think that gender applies to them: that it's a subject for girls.

Sometimes I like to play the soundtracks to famous musicals so we can all sing along. South Pacific is one of my favorites. Our neighbors must hate us.

Reading is my greatest luxury.

Never give up. And most importantly, be true to yourself. Write from your heart, in your own voice, and about what you believe in.

The young women in my classes are feisty and clever and believe, often with the passion of youthful optimism, that feminism is a battle already won. I worry for them - and for my daughters, too.

I can't pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.

People still come up to me and ask whether I am Louise Brown or if they've seen me somewhere else before.

I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating.

I like many types of music and probably too many to mention here.

I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas.

The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers.

The richest most meaningful stories are found in small places: made, carried, crafted, told, and retold by apparently unimportant people.

Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children's bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember.

When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so.

The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places.

I don't envy men and I certainly wouldn't like to become one now.

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

Remember that what you have is unique because it's your own special way of looking at the world.

I used to think about how I was conceived quite a lot when I was about 10 or 11, but I don't think about it at all now that so many other babies have been born in the same way.

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.

Then I obviously didn't understand what it all meant, but I do now.

I thought it was something peculiar to me. I thought I was abnormal.

When dad told me Mr Steptoe had passed away, I broke down.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

I think as a guy you need a little bit to be on your own from early on, to start to live your own life, and try to understand what is going on around you, you have to be able to survive.

I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.

There aren't many odysseys in cinema for characters.

I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man.

I'm definitely looking forward to doing a film one day with more female actors.

Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.

One thing, when you're an actor, you finish something and then you have to worry about what the next gig is. When you're a musician, you can always write your own stuff, and I'm working on new stuff for a new album right now.

I'm really not that confident!

The good and bad things are what form us as people change makes us grow.

Morning is a wonderful blessing either sunny or stormy. It stands for hope giving us another start of what we call life.

The whole 'studly womaniser' thing, I mean, I quite enjoy the title - it's just not very accurate.

An early fascination with higher mathematics at the university level blossomed into speculative thinking that could provide a basis for dealing with economic issues.

I have a very bad relationship with mice.

A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.

The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.

You convey something that the public either trusts or it does not trust, and it has to do with the content and how you handle the news, but it also just has something to do with your persona.

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).

There was always dance in opera until people forgot to keep it going.