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You have got to clean your own house first before you tell other people that they aren't doing it right.

We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.

I can clean my own house. Now, maybe a couple of times a year we have a cleaning crew come in before we have a party, but otherwise, I'm able to maintain it myself.

I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.

I really have to force myself to tidy up around the house.

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.

I get strangely obsessed about the cleanliness of my house.

The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.

I like to read in my own house, in any of the rooms I always mean to paint or otherwise improve and never do. Every detail is so familiar to me that it makes almost no claim on my attention.