"In that instance, my body had decided that this baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it is my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right."

"When a woman says, 'I have nothing to wear!', what she really means is, 'There's nothing here for who I'm supposed to be today."

"Within living memory of this country, men could rape their wives: women were not seen as a separate sexual entity, with the right of refusal."

"The people around you are mirrors, I think. You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That's how you learn who you are."

"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead."

"The actual handbag is neither here nor there-- it's what you keep in it that's the most important thing."

"In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, anymore. It has to be about who we are and what we're going to do."

"Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside jigsaws."

"First world babies are eating this planet like termites."

"One of the great things about being a writer/journalist is that my boss loves me to go out and do features on being someone else. I did a feature on Kate Middleton, where I went to an incredible fancy state home in the countryside, put on a wedding dress and posed for engagement pictures with a fake Prince William."

"After all, you can argue " argue until you cry " about whatmodern, codified misogyny is; but straight-up ungentlemanliness,of the kind his mother would clatter the back of his head for, isinarguable. It doesn't need to be a 'man vs woman' thing. It's just atiff between The Guys.Seeing the whole world as 'The Guys' is important. The ideathat we're all, at the end of the day, just a bunch of well-meaningschlumps, trying to get along, is the basic alpha and omega of myworld view. I'm neither 'pro-women' nor 'antimen'. I'm just 'Thumbsup for the six billion'."