Who knows why we do it? And when we’ve done it, nobody wants it. Still we keep doing it. That’s what makes a writer a writer.

Beauty lies between the erotic and the tragic.

Inside our mind there is hidden place that contains the mind within the mind. There, you will find another version of yourself that may be your true self. We do not find that self by...

You wait and wait, you get used to waiting. But when your time comes, you must not miss it.

The kiss is the greatest of gifts, uniquely human. A kiss before midnight. A kiss before dying. The Judas kiss. The kiss of the devil. A big wet smacker beneath the mistletoe. More can be...

I had avoided writing about love. I had never sensed that rush and buzz that comes with love, the release into the brain of body chemicals, pheromones and dopamine – the taste of love to...

Making love requires no thought. You move as the fronds of a palm tree move in the breeze. It is all instinct. All wonder. When you love someone, your lips are incomplete until they are...

You can cross the Rubicon in a boat without getting wet, but surely, getting wet is the baptism before you begin that new life on the other side.

There is a sense that we are waiting for something, that however wonderful something is, there is something else waiting to tempt us; however perfect someone is, someone else might be better, more suitable, more...

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...

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...

Inner beauty is never found in the mirror.

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

A really good kiss is like a secret you want to share. A really good kiss reminds you why it’s hard to decide on the right lipstick. The first kiss stays in you’re mind –...

There are many ways to live, to love, to aspire. The mountain only has one peak but there are limitless paths that you can take to reach it. The secret, they say, is to find...

Two spacemen touching in anti-gravity is like a kiss. But then, there is nothing like a kiss. A kiss is a rare bird. The first sip of champagne. The fleeting glimpse of a shooting star....

To realise your ambitions, you must take a few minutes each day to meditate on your ultimate goal, not doing anything, just thinking about it. You must try to imagine how you will feel when...

There is a moment when dancing when the body defies gravity. This is the moment to strive for.

The moment of orgasm is like the first dramatic moment of birth when you draw breath and scream out that you are alive. It is hard to imagine the moment when you fade back into...

Beauty is a burden as well as a gift. Beauty puts other women on edge. It torments men. Man is born adoring beauty and carries, just below the surface, a predisposition, a gut feeling, that...

Writers strive for the impossible: perfection. Even the universe is flawed.

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

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

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...

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

Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets.

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

Relationships are nine parts intuition, one part madness.

Italians make you laugh and break your heart.

Beauty everywhere and in everything. Beauty hides sometimes; it is invisible sometimes, like the air we breathe. But it is there if you look hard enough and want to find it.

Characters begin as your children and become your teachers.

Is this love? The light looks different. Actually the shade looks different. I feel different. Everything is just so different I don’t know where to begin…

Today is a black day. Tomorrow it may be white. You may look beautiful one day, and not the next. It is not only a matter of other people’s perceptions, it’s about our own perceptions....

There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose...

You enter a book as if you are setting out on a journey and, if it is a good book, you will be a different person when you reach the end.

Love enters us like a vague ailment. Your head spins. Your underarms tingle. Love hurts and love has consequences: marriage, babies, separation, longing, human complications.

There is a kind of truth in a well-told lie. When we look back, we don’t see things as they were but how we would like them to have been.

The moment he left the warm sheets and the door clicked shut, I had that feeling you get when you are lost in a strange town at night. I curled into the chair where he...

Art in order to move you has to be political or sexual – whether it is on canvas, in the drum of the cello, in the words of the poet. If it doesn’t move you,...

It is in the nest of disappointment where depression lays its eggs.

The touch of his fingertips on my back is like a great cellist brushing the strings of his instrument, or a watchmaker turning a tiny screw invisible to the naked eye. The feeling is erotic,...

It’s fun being a girl.

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...

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 understood how strangers met and fell into bed, not how they met and fell in love. I wasn’t sure what falling in love meant. The very notion seemed so corny, so arbitrary, so fragile.

Love is possession, a sort of vanity.

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

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,...

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and...

You don’t feel yourself falling in love, like it’s a journey, a process; on the contrary, it hits you like a sudden ague, a fever, the realisation that your life will never be the same...