"'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late."

“Much as we complain about our condition or feel victimized by fortune or fellow humans, we simply love being alive. We love life in others and in ourselves. We are in love with life. To love life is to love the activities of which it consists and to hope for more.”

Source : John Lachs (1998). “In Love with Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and why We Hate to Die”, p.136, Vanderbilt University Press

“My father has a way of persuading people without charm that has always confused me. He states his opinions as if they’re facts, and somehow his complete lack of doubt makes you believe him. That quality frightens me now, because I know what he told me: that I was broken, that I was worthless, that I was nothing. How many of those things did he make me believe?”

“Cooperation for mutual benefit, a survival strategy very common in natural systems, is one that humanity needs to emulate.”

Source : Eugene Pleasants Odum (1983). “Basic Ecology”, Saunders College Pub

“Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.”

“We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children.”

“Slovenliness is a lazy and beastly negligence of a man's own person, whereby he becomes so sordid as to be offensive to those about him.”

Source : Jean de La Bruyère, Nicholas Rowe, Theophrastus (1713). “The characters, or, the manners of the present age”, p.41

“life unfolds itself in mysteries ways.”

“When someone has to do work for me, I lose my mind. I can't help it, I'm a bit of a control freak. I've always wanted something that would depict slow-moving paintings, stunning artwork that also incorporates movement. It was hard letting someone else create that vision for me, but I love it.”