Naming one thing after another cannot, logically, increase the chances of the new thing turning out like the old thing.

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.

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

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.

He wants to enslave you.''I shudder at the thought of being free.

Many have balls but only a few have heart.

Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wish we had.

The sun set, which is everyday magic...

If security guards aren't allowed to carry guns, I don't have to obey their made up rules.

I mean it’s never a problem making out with Nina Dobrev, I mean that’s always really cool!

There is the plain fool who does the wrong thing at all times anywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool who thinks he must trade all the time.

For some people, marriage may be very groovy. For me, it really isn't. I don't think it really is for most people anyway. Most people are not very happy.

Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find it was emptiness that made the music.

You should have only one intense desire within yourself: Have I become the spirit? Have I achieved my ultimate? Have I risen above the worldly desires?