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Where did love begin? What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea? Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you?
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There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.
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In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.
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I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.
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The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.
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I never cared about money.
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What's invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.
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It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.
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What you risk reveals what you value.
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I'm not a quitter.
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I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.
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London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.
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I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.
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You say we are not one, you say truly there are two of us. Yes, there were two of us, but we were one. As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.
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Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
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I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
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To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.
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I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.
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We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.
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Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.
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I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
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When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.
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I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.
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Naked is the best disguise.