"Writing isn't something you do because you feel like it. You never feel like it. You write because there's a rat in your brain chewing up the spirals of your DNA and you want to get the words down before they disappear."

"When I was 6 I wanted to be a nurse. When I was 14 I wanted to be a spy or a lion tamer. When I was 16 I wanted too be a highwire walker or an acrobat. Or maybe a clown with a white face. Then I gave up wanting to be anything other than what I am and what I am is a woman with a woman's needs and a woman's desires."

"The way the leaves on the trees tremble in the passing air is the way love reaches you, from all directions at once, mysterious, overwhelming, indescribable. To be in love is to find something you didn't know was missing."

"Sex is a three letter word even the worst speller in the world can spell."

"When you dance, your whole body dances, your skin and bones, your soul, The tips of your fingers and the roots of your hair. When you stop dancing you stop living."

"Love and being in love are not the same thing. The woman takes the man she loves into her body and absorbs his oils and essence. A part of him enters her and becomes a part of her."

"Love is possession, a sort of vanity."

"If life is what you make it, the building blocks are your desire and your passion."

"Mummy became a shadow, a woman who had lost herself because she had never found herself. She had always done the right thing, and I had a feeling that the right thing is always going to be the wrong thing, that you find yourself by stepping out of yourself."

"I'm my characters' galley slave."

"Sex is a three act play: foreplay, play and afterplay."

"After making love there is nothing like making love, slowly, idly, like walking without a destination, or swimming in a warm sea."

"Write what you want to write. That's the only advice a writer will ever need."

"While love lasts it should be relished, gobbled up like ice cream, explored as the conquistadors explored the unknown continent. But when love evaporates, when love hurts, we must learn to let go of the idea that love is forever."

"To listen to criticism and act on it if it is valid and ignore it if it is not is a sign of intelligence."

"What is love? Imagine a helium balloon tied down and then you cut the ropes on a windy day. That is love."

"To be or not to be what exactly?"

"I read the novel I had been writing for several months with an odd sense that it was the work of a stranger. I usually work in the dead hours of night and surprising the manuscript mid-morning revealed the flaws and excesses it was trying to conceal."

"You may not believe in chance but it provides us with every opportunity we need."

"Love hurts. Love is fragile. Love comes like a breath of magic, then departs leaving us feeling empty, alone, a paper cup blowing on the wind."

"In life there are perfect moments. You cannot plan them - the very act interferes with the laws of the universe - but you must be ready to recognise them when they come."

"I am made of words. Cut me & I bleed sentences. Read me, & I speak to your soul."

"Don't waste time with people who waste time. Time is precious, fragile as a butterfly wing, meaningful as an orgasm."

"The hardest thing in the world is to be original. It seems like our heads are filled with banalities and clichés. You have to keep digging deeper and deeper to try and find a fresh new seam that hasn't been explored."

"Sex exists in the now without past or future. If, for a single second, your minds drifts back to the past or forwards into the unknown, the moment withers like a dead plant and the passage of pleasure turns to a road of dust."

"If you roll a pearl around your mouth it slowly reveals the dreams of oysters, memories of the sea, the taste of orgasm."

"Writing is like a religion to those who don't practise, an act of faith for those who do."

"The erotic is not about nudity and nudity is rarely erotic. The erotic is subtle, a feeling, a gesture, a mood, a story frozen in the moment that holds you breathless waiting for the next moment. Understand this, and you understand the erotic."

"Relationships are nine parts intuition, one part madness."

"I am made of words. When you cut me, I bleed sentences. When you read me, I speak to your soul."

"When it happened I was terrified. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was a cliche. I looked at myself in the mirror and in my eyes was a look I had never seen before: confusion, mystery and, yes, happiness. I had fallen in love."

"In our own way, in your own way, we are all of us a masterpiece. Everyone is unique."

"The quest of the alchemists to turn lead into gold is a metaphor for our attempts to turn the base metal of ourselves, that person hooked on consumerism, filled with angst and ambition, into the gold of what we can be and really are."

"Always say yes and try before you say no."

"You must write as if each word is a precious drop of blood, or a tear to be saved in a glass phial."

"The problem with being a liar is you can never believe anyone else."

"Characters begin as your children and become your teachers."

"Photographs shape the past in our own image."

"We are flowers in the field seeking our individuality. We may seem similar but we are all unique, without exception. Everyone is special."

"They say the best things in life are free, and they are if you can afford them."

"I was always in love with love and now I am in love. In love, everything looks different. Everything tastes different. It is as if you have been reborn, transformed, become another person whom you don't completely recognise."

"If sex is a journey, orgasm is the both the purpose and journey's end."

"When you cut the cords on the safety net and walk out on the highwire, you become yourself and become all that you can be and all that you were meant to be. But first, you must cut the cords."

"Falling in love is like falling from a high cliff into a warm silky sea, the falling is like flying and the landing is like a glimpse of the divine."

"The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things."

"A woman's heart and a woman's dreams are malleable and can change at any moment. It is the essence of being a woman."

"One of the key secrets of great writing is knowing where to start and when to stop."

"From a book you can learn the theory but it takes practise to learn how to live life."

"If you add the shadow of death to a moment of passion you are in that instant free of all normal ties, your mind grows still and your body enters a state of non-being."

"The future is trapped in a cage opened only by the key of genius."