Quotes

Every day is a good day when you're floating. Your whole life you spend walking around Earth and then all of a sudden you get to fly like you've dreamed of.

When you are finally in space and you're finally looking back at Earth and you realize for the first time in your life there's nothing standing between you and your dream, it's just so hard to describe the profound impact of that.

Families interest me - I'm part of one; most of us come from one. And I'm curious about the choices made in life, how they affect things, and how those choices happen.

I really believe we read differently when we know even the most banal facts of an author's life.

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Life is a gift, given in trust - like a child.

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light.

What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. Look at us. We run a tightrope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of.

The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls - women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.

I think people who don't go away to university are missing out on one of the great life experiences. You meet people from so many different places and it's the shared life experience that helps you grow.

I didn't have a life. Basically, for 40 years it was my work and my nose was to the grindstone the whole time.

I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health.

You never know what life is going to throw at you, really, do you?

I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.

I think it's such a clever idea, that you fall in love when you're 16, and then you have this fantasy about that person for the rest of your life.

The day that changed my life was 3 July 1986, when I went to see American actress and singer Barbara Cook at London's Donmar Warehouse.

I'm not homophobic. I mean, who cares? You know the state of the world, and you're only here for about 70, 80, years, so why do people worry about somebody's sex life? It's bonkers, really.

I should be in an old people's home now, counting the roses in the wallpaper. It's a good life, isn't it?

Inner talent gives you that ease. It's not a remarkable thing - just a knack that gives you a very nice life.

Wouldn't it be lovely if there were no such things as birth certificates? If I really thought I was 53, life would be much better. I'd love to blow up all the birth certificates.

I don't think I've ever been lonely in my entire life. I love to shut my front door and be on my own.

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.

I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days.

I have always been fascinated by the human mind, conscious and unconscious - that is what writing and reading is about, too. The why of your life and the why of your choices and the what has happened that you know and the what that you don't know is really riveting, and psychoanalysts share my wonder at how it all unfolds.