He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

We don't object to our date of birth, so why object to our date of death, which is just as much a matter of chance.

Simplicity carried to an extreme becomes elegance.

With high hope for the future no prediction is ventured.

The past is a guidepost not a hitching post.

I don't ever want to be hugely famous because I had a little taste of it after 'East Is East' and 'Bend It.'

I stand by what I write and follow through on what I write.

The public doesn't believe [press] anymore. Maybe I had something to do with that, I don't know. But they don't believe you.

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn't learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot.

You're my best friend in the scene and together we can make sense of what's going on by being Together.

I love crafting and cooking, doing all of that.