“I go into the local chemist, and I can hear people saying, 'Oh my Gaaa...” — Amanda Foreman Quote

“I go into the local chemist, and I can hear people saying, 'Oh my Gaaahd - it's Lisa Kudrow!' And there's a famous Amanda Foreman, an actress two years older than me, who appears in 'Private Practice'.”

“In New York, appearance is a form of currency or, at the very least, a calling card. One must look wealthy in order to be recognised as a person of worth.”

“One of the reasons it is considered such a privilege to sit on a Man Booker jury is because it is famously rigorous. The judging is not a gig for lightweights. Not only are all five judges expected to have read all 155 books from beginning to end, but they have to be able to talk fluently about every book at length.”

“An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision.”

“Some story appears in some newspaper that says that somebody said X, Y, and Z, and a customer says, I don't understand what they're talking about - we're running that product, we've been using it for five years, what are they talking about?”

“I can't tell you how many times I've been writing and then found myself seven clicks deep into a Wikipedia entry that I don't even care about. Self-distraction appears to be my version of sleepwalking.”