I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

You couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate at least something. Indeed, perhaps you couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate almost everything.

If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.

I don't have a day job, so I read any time of day.

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

There's never a bad time to put earplugs in. They're the kind of thing you can reject as a bit lame, but somebody told me to do start wearing earplugs and it turned out to be great advice.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

I'm very finicky about when I'm in the right mood to write. So most days, I find some excuse not to do anything.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often.

Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches...

Not every relationship can be altered to fit.

Well, anytime I make a movie, I like to load it up with more things than you could ever catch on the first viewing.

The mountain at a given distance In amber lies; Approached, the amber flits a little,-- And that's the skies!

I get the sense many people are unsure about their digital media allocation. Even those who believe they are progressive in their thinking wonder if they have got it right.

I like to keep my surroundings low-key. I don't need much around me. I'm easy don't need a lot of racket.

The landlord's laugh was ready chorus.

Whatever sport you choose, do it because you love it, and don't expect to be an expert first thing. It takes time to do well at anything, but if you love it, you'll stick with it.

Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.