“The beach is not a place to work; to read, write or to think.”

“I write what I would like to read – what I think other women would like to read. If what I write makes a woman in the Canadian mountains cry and she writes and tells me about it, especially if she says ‘I read it to Tom when he came in from work and he cried too,’ I feel I have succeeded.”

“The more you read and write, the better you think and live.”

“Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork — reading, writing, thinking — can.”

“You wouldn't want Alan Greenspan to write the instructions for assembling a beach chair.”

“Hollywood is a place where some people lie on the beach and look up at the stars, whereas other people lie on the stars and look down at the beach.”

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

“Let's not worry about what somebody reading the code tomorrow is going to think. Let's not worry about whether it's efficient. Let's not even worry about whether it will work. Let's just write the simplest thing that could possibly work.”

“I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”

“You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don't even think about being a writer.”