New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.

You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.

That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.

Luckily for you, you can close the book The Postman Always Rings Twice and break out of it, and James M. Cain can't. I can't think of any redeeming feature he has, but he's extremely compelling.

Truth is important than anything. But you have to know how to handle it well.

She’d never seen such a thing back on Grave

What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?

the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.

The way in which a group of people solves problems.

There is no realism in American films. No realism, but something much better, great truth.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

You know how to vanquish, Hannibal, but you do not know how to profit from victory.

I love goofing around, and I love breaking people's balls. I do it off camera, as well as on camera.

There is no greater weapon than a prepared mind.