"Isn't that the problem? That women have been swindled for centuries into substituting adornment for love, fashion (as it were) for passion?"

“Materials are very important to me, and always have been.”

“I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.”

“One consistent thing in an otherwise inconsistent career is that I've always been passionate about parliament.”

Source : Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2011.

“In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work - now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably.”

“It's around midnight. After I left Dad, my choice was to either become very drunk or write this. I chose to write this. It felt kind of now-or-never for me.”

“Life is a flash of lightning in the dark of night. It is a brief time of tremendous potential.”

Source : B. Alan Wallace (2001). “Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-point Mind-training”, Snow Lion Publications, Incorporated

“The small charity that comes from the heart is better than the great charity that comes from the head.”

“The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study.”