"While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women."

"There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30..."

"The trouble with modern cooking is that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure."

"But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in."

"I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can’t find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere – cooking is the neatest thing I do."

"Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one."

"I don't take criticisms personally, which must be very annoying for people who mean them personally."

"I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!"

"I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about."

""My gift to you will be to take away your freedom of choice for a while. Freedom can be very unhealthy and unproductive. Instead, you’ll have freedom from choice.”"

"For months I had been trying to be less myself."

"I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another eating while reading."

"[p]eople who go to Wikipedia to get ideas for whom to hire, or honor, or read, and look at that list of 'American Novelists' for inspiration ... might simply use that list without thinking twice about it."

"Reality is so dull, Alan thought. Any mistake in one’s perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error."

"“One of my greatest pleasures in life is promising myself I will not drink, or smoke, or take coke, or do heroin, or eat cookies, then doing it. It’s a pleasure that can be repeated daily.”"

"Lynn stalked. She had taken up stalking for health reasons, but it was not paying off as handsomely as she had hoped."

"I bring Laura to the edge of the clapping crowd, and I watch her sink, becoming engulfed in the sea of clapter."

"The intention appears to be to create a list of ‘American Novelists’ on Wikipedia that is made up almost entirely of men. The category lists 3,837 authors, and the first few hundred of them are mainly men."

"His body was now very close to hers, and he dared to bring his hand under her skirt. “Where is your underwear?” he asked. “I lost it.” “Where?” “In the garden. It fell off when I was spying. I didn’t have time to retrieve it.”"

"I try to see my films just once. It's like a dream you've been through when it's been intense, and you just have to go through it once more just to make sure you've had it."

"I think the characters I play go through tunnels, like in Three Colours : Blue, for example, where she’s lost everything ... In The English Patient, she loses her best friend; this patient is dying in front of her – there’s no hope, so she’s going to start from the bottom. In films we see extremes, because it’s where you have turning points. Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films — as if all my characters were sisters – but I’m not so sure now."

"I am full of doubts ... Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly — and that is exactly the way I want it to stay."

"I felt all kinds of pressure on myself...I didn't want to disappoint anybody. But that is nothing that compares to someone dealing with a health issue, so my shit is no big deal."

"I think it's really a good thing.... It's the best thing for the show, and I feel really good about it."

"Julie won a scholarship to Harvard. Graduated with honors and received another scholarship to Boston University Medical School. Julie became a medical doctor, alas, losing her medical license to a terrible addiction to heroin. As an ex-addict, she now manages Autoworld Go Carts in West Covina, California. She has the highest score on PacMan... Go Julie!!!"

"I grew up as a tomboy. I was always barefoot, running races with the guys on the block, climbing trees, and beating kids up."

"All I ever wanted to do was act. And pay my bills"

"When I'm all alone it's the best way to be. When I'm by myself nobody else can say goodbye.Everything is temporary anyway. When the streets are wet — the colors slip into the sky. But I don't know why that means you and I are — that means you and... I quit, I give up. Nothin's good enough for anybody else, it seems."

"I don't believe in hatred anymore. I hate to think of how it felt before When anger overwhelms your very soul It's hard to realize you'll ever knowLove like we do."

"Maybe you ride a different wave. Maybe you catch another ray of the sun That I've just begun to feel."

"All your thoughts are in another head. Your dreams are sleepin' in a different bed. The force that moves you is a circular breath of life and death going round and round and round."

"Wheels keep on turning and turning and turning And nothing's disturbing the way they go around."

"The village idiots in her bed Never cared that her eyes were red Never cared that her brain was dead. In the hours that her face was alive It was a thing just to be by her side."

"What I am is what I am. Are you what you are — or what?"

"Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep."

"Philosophy, is the talk on a cereal box. Religion, is a smile on a dog."

"I'm not aware of too many things. I know what I know if you know what I mean."

"In a world religion class, everyone was complicating life and existence by over-thinking. I had this sense it's right here, right now. It's who we are and what we feel. It's not this tangled web of psychology and philosophy. I was driving to band practice and started singing that song. I wanted to be real, not adopt some philosophy or role. Instinct is our driving force."

"He made me mess the song up when I looked at him... We can show the kids the tape and say, "Look, that's when we first laid eyes on each other.""

"Sail through the sea of sad faces with love. Love. Love for everyone. Drift like a little boat on a wave."

"I really thought I could give it up... But I really love music, and having a creative outlet is really the best thing you can do for yourself."

"I notice me. I notice you too. And there are simple things that we don't even try anymore. There's a way out of this. Beat the time. And every time I turn around we got some clever way to put each other down."

"I was just falling in love right, left and centre with these gorgeous young artists who came in the gallery. They’d see this fat old stripper, this nutter who runs a butcher’s shop that she thinks is an art gallery, and who thinks she’s some artist but hasn’t even been to art school... They probably thought, "Christ, who is this woman who’s texting me 20 times a day?""

"On Christmas Day I'll head off for a couple of laps around the Serpentine, or a trek around the whole of Hyde Park. Or I'll walk right across town, with Curtis, my son Jamie's bull mastiff"

"My working hours are not that conventional. I often get up about two in the morning and do a painting, and then I'll have a bath, and then I often feel very hungry around 4am, so I'll go into Soho and have a meal somewhere like Balans. That's what I love about living here - there's always life around me."

"When Alexander McQueen bought the Kate Moss painting, she was really being persecuted. I can't remember the exact timing, but I think it was before the cocaine, when she was just having a hard time with Peter. I think that was when he bought that. I was really pleased because he was such a huge supporter of her. It was so terrible what was happening to her."

"(I) imagined the princess, too scared to use the phone at the palace because she knew it was bugged. So she decides to go out, still wearing her best princess dress, and with her make-up smudged because she’d put it on in a hurry. And I thought she’d have gone to the shops and used a public phone. There’s a whole string of Asian newsagents at that particular place. It’s all very vivid… ‘Hi Paul, can you come over.’"

"Perhaps the people I choose to paint are often objects of derision celebrity is a bit of a put-down term, isn't it? But to me they are my world."

"I felt I didn't belong to either family."

"I felt like a social worker a lot of the time."