John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.

I suppose one should have an integrated personality, but I've never really seen the point.

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

A writer uses his pen as a gun to kill readers.

Keep you enemies in front of you.

I'm kind of a weirdo about Krazy Glue. I don't know why, but I always have it in my purse.

I'm a professional singer. I have a theory that all actors want to be rock stars, and all rock stars want to be actors. I spent my whole school life forming boy bands.

Just because others have it worse doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence.

Comedy is not supposed to be funny. Its supposed to tell the truth and then that's funny.

In our current state of human development it remains unclear whether we will correct one of life's greatest tragedies, namely, the inability to appreciate a blessing until it is lost.

I made you, dear, and all I make is perfect. Please come close, for I desire you.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

My commitment to a humane and peaceful world continues to this day.