I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Show me a person who really knows what 'good' is, and I will show you that he almost never uses the word.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it.What the devil was the reason?

Vintage kisses, " Finlay said. "If only they could be bottled, you would have an elixir beyond price.

I've always said that I use my voice as an instrument. It was something I created myself, and I said, 'Have voice, will travel.'

One of the advantages of the book's having been out there for more than a quarter century is that there's been time for people to report back on what it's done for them.

What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything!

I want to get physical, let's get into physical, let me hear your body talk, your body talk.

One rarely does well what one rarely does.

To have the opportunity to complete the slam at the Open at St Andrews, the home of golf, is something I will never ever forget.

I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.