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

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 think if people are passionate about something, it could be real estate or biochemistry, and that spark gets turned on in them, everyone's beautiful in that zone.

I have always been the same player, but Conte knows how to treat players, having played at the highest level himself.

I don't want the kind of theater that I love and grew up seeing to die out.

I still consider myself a working-class girl and would send my kids to public school.

I'm 37, I'm pretty fit and feel I have another eight years left - which means there's 32 Majors still to go at.

I'm a loner. I like to hide a lot.

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.

When youre feeling your worst thats when you get to know yourself the best.

I am a zombie fan, but all of the zombie stories I've enjoyed started when the dead rose and ended three days later with everybody looking exhausted. I was thinking, 'What happens in 20 years?'

Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday.

Every decision you make reflects your evaluation of who you are.

The dreary flies lazy and casual Stick to the ceiling buzz along the wall. O heart the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving between the pinks and grapes his pall.

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.

The world would be better off with multiple superpowers. When Communist USSR was a superpower, the world was better off.

I wasn't a cliquey person, and I think that's because I came from a large family. I got along with everybody, and I usually got along with the people that people didn't like.

A lot of times when people cast me, they want this big, deep black voice... And I tend to recycle them with different roles from time to time.

Well, I realized finally that all of the hard work paid off.

Its a wonderful thing as time goes by to be with someone who looks into your face when youve gotten old and still sees what you think you look like.

I think I am one of the smallest surviving brands.

Any time I was at Trader Joes, and the person bagging my stuff would be like, 'Did I go to college with you? How do I know you?' Then it took awhile, and suddenly people were like, 'Oh, you are the girl from 'United States of Tara.'

Some girls go for bad boys because they like the challenge of changing them - which is usually unrealistic.