Reading is my greatest luxury.
The young women in my classes are feisty and clever and believe, often with the passion of youthful optimism, that feminism is a battle already won. I worry for them – and for my daughters, too.
If you can’t return a favor, pass it on.
Remember that what you have is unique because it’s your own special way of looking at the world.
People still come up to me and ask whether I am Louise Brown or if they’ve seen me somewhere else before.
I’m working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas.
I used to think about how I was conceived quite a lot when I was about 10 or 11, but I don’t think about it at all now that so many other babies have been born in the same way.
I thought it was something peculiar to me. I thought I was abnormal.
Don’t write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.
I can’t pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.
I have a good collection of cookery books. This is not so much because I like cooking, but because I like eating.
The importance and influence of books on me has been cumulative: the result of hearing and reading lots of stories about interesting people and places.
I don’t envy men and I certainly wouldn’t like to become one now.
I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.
Don’t call ’em dogs. Dogs are loyal and they run after balls.
I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.
Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children’s bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember.
When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I’ve found it hard to read as much as I’d like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so.
The richest most meaningful stories are found in small places: made, carried, crafted, told, and retold by apparently unimportant people.
I like many types of music and probably too many to mention here.