The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.

I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.

It has always felt like a failure that Bjorn and I couldn't keep our family together. You never get it back but to this day I don't regret splitting up. The reason behind our separation is one of those things I definitely don't want to go into!

With improvisation I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again.

A love of nature is a consolation against failure.

Failure's not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger.

America's most dangerous diseases have developed an immunity to politics. We suffer not from a failure of political organization or power but a failure of love.

Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is experienced as embodied sensation in the catastrophe.

It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt - in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure - to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black.

But thankfully my first album 'Wide Screen ' was sort of a critics' darling - everyone raved about it but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10 000 copies I wasn't even in the running for failure!