I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die.

I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction.

I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people.

I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.

The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.

To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguities, the feminist analysis may have seemed a particularly narrow and cracked determinism.

Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service.

You aren't sure if you're making the right decision - about anything, ever.

In Brentwood we had a big safe-deposit box to put manuscripts in if we left town during fire season. It was such a big box that we never bothered to clean it out.

Style is character.

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

I went on a book tour immediately after 9/11. I was due to leave the following Wednesday, so I just did. It was an amazing thing, because planes hadn't been flying very many days, and I got on this plane and went to San Francisco, and the minute that plane lifted above the clouds, I felt this incredible sense of lightness.

I can remember, when I was in college, irritating deeply somebody I was going out with, because he would ask me what I was thinking and I would say I was thinking nothing. And it was true.

The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and ivories, dusty rose, what seems in retrospect an eccentric amount of black.

Call me the author.

Hemingway was really early. I probably started reading him when I was just eleven or twelve. There was just something magnetic to me in the arrangement of those sentences. Because they were so simple - or rather they appeared to be so simple, but they weren't.

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance.

The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities.

Nothing is critic-proof.

I lead a very conventional life.

My own fantasies of what life would be like at 24 tended to the more spectacular.

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.

I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe.

I am always writing to myself.

I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people. This was more true when I was living in California, when I didn't lead a writer's life at all.

Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.

The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer.

Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you somebody who has never achieved much.

If you feel well and happy, your face will reflect this, but if you are down in the dumps and having a miserable time, your face will soon show this, too. In fact, you get the face you deserve by the time you're forty, and one of the keys to looking and feeling younger is being active.

The body is like a car: the older you become the more care you have to take care of it - and you don't leave a Ferrari out in the sun.

I don't look my age, I don't feel my age and I don't act my age. To me age is just a number.

If life throws you a lemon - make lemonade.

It's no one's fault to be born ugly, but, honestly, must it be worn as a symbol of pride?

I'm a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, which are so flattering when they catch the light. I love the designers Alexis Bittar and Kenneth Jay Lane, and I always go to jewellers Butler & Wilson.

We live in a quick-fix society where we need instant gratification for everything. Too fat? Get lipo-sucked. Stringy hair? Glue on extensions. Wrinkles and lines? Head to the beauty shop for a pot of the latest miracle skin stuff. It's all a beautiful £1 billion con foisted upon insecure women by canny cosmetic conglomerates.

You can't help getting older, but you can help yourself from becoming old and infirm, in mind as well as body.

Doing 20 minutes of stretching, light weights and floor exercises three times a week takes the same amount of time as a long coffee break - and eating a tuna fish salad, sardines on toast or scrambled eggs is surely preferable to a Big Mac or KFC.

I eat an avocado every day. It's amazing for your skin. It's one of the super-foods, and I'm just so into eating properly and healthily.

I think bare legs in winter are idiotic. Unless your naked pins are toned, tanned and veinless, it's best to cover up. There is nothing more elegant in winter than dark tights worn with matching knee-length boots and a belted trench coat.

The sad truth is that most of my husbands turned out to be convincing liars.

Having had five husbands, I guess I should know a thing or two about marriage.

Certainly there are dozens of over-50 actresses who look great: Sophia Loren, Susan Sarandon, Ursula Andress, Stefanie Powers, Raquel Welch, Barbara Eden, Joanna Lumley, Linda Gray - the list is endless, and these are just the actresses! I have many friends in their 60s, 70s and 80s, not in the limelight, but who all look absolutely stunning.