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.
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.
Reading is my greatest luxury.
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.
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.