“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.

You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it.

Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can’t function without it.

If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. If you don’t know where you are going, how do you know when you get there? If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.

There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it.

Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.

I look forward and see myself look back.

If we can be sufficient unto ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs.

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love and loyalty. They depart to teach us about loss.

Keeping a journal implies hope.

If there’s anything a public servant hates to do it’s something for the public.

I ain’t a bit ashamed of anything.

No man does anything from a single motive.

Hardly anybody ever writes anything nice about introverts. Extroverts rule. This is rather odd when you realise that about nineteen writers out of twenty are introverts.

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else.

Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.

I also don’t believe that whatever comes after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions…I don’t believe that what comes after depends on anything I do at all.

Bargain… anything a customer thinks a store is losing money on.