ROSAMUNDE PILCHER

There is no magic in all the world like that magic when you sell your first bit of writing.

Not having a father always made you feel that perhaps you weren't quite the same as other people. You felt you weren't complete.

In Germany, I have been called the Queen of Kitsch, but I don't mind that - as long as people buy the books.

The two most wonderful things in life are money and sex, but the minute you start discussing them, they become b-o-r-i-n-g.

People today expect too much from marriage. Getting married is really like taking on a big new job.

Life for women in rural Scotland is not like anywhere else in the world. We all live very far apart, and you don't just ring your girlfriend up for a cup of coffee. There really is no sense of community, no pubs, no clubs. The golf clubs are male prerogatives, and the women are isolated and have to have their own resources.

I'm not terribly intelligent - I have no university degree, you know.

I never expect anything from anybody. I'm a bit Scottish like that - I don't like to be disappointed and let down. I like to take life very slowly.

I'm getting too elderly to travel the length of the country for a free hangover.

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.

It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever

Things happen they way they're meant to. There's a pattern and a shape to everything...Nothing happens without a reason...Nothing is impossible...(Page 180).

She put out her hand and touched his forearm, as she would have touched some piece of porcelain or sculpture, just for the sheer animal pleasure of feeling its shape and curve beneath her fingertips.

It was good and nothing good is ever lost.

Life is so extraordinary. Wonderful surprises are just around the most unexpected corners.

Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger.

And the wicked thing is, that when we're really upset, we always take it out on the people who are closest and whom we love the most.

Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you've got.

Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

Other people's houses were always fascinating. As soon as you went through the door for the first time, you got the feel of the atmosphere, and so discovered something about the personalities of the people who lived there.

There's a war on. We don't know how anything's going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by.

I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.

Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion, and once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them.