I mean, it's the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can... →
Joe Mantegna
I'm in the wrong racket if I didn't want a public life.
Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose... →
Hilary Mantel
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even... →
When I was a child, there was very little money, so I've always been concerned for my financial security, which has meant that finding myself as... →
For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.
Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer... →
It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you... →
There are plenty of books that tell you how to become a writer, but not one that suggests how, if you want a normal life, you might reverse the... →
When narratives fracture, when words fail, I take consolation from the part of my life that always works: the stationery order. The mail-order... →