Psychoanalysis feeds on intensity, as though life were all flame and no ash.

Biography can be the most middle-class of all forms, the judgment of little people avenging themselves on the great.

The most important things in our intimate lives can't be discussed with strangers, except in books.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.

Paris... is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn't the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together

Tennessee Williams recognized that great theater begins with great talkers, and that great talkers obey two rules: they never sound like anyone else and they never say anything directly.

If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

Ive always seen writing as a way of telling the truth. For me, writing is about truth. I have always tried to be faithful to my own experience.

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be

I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.

You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.

I'm more of a freestyle dancer. I like to do my own thing.

He that would be a great man must learn to turn every accident to some advantage.

Let's get up here before we get killed!

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

Newcastle are absolutely besotted by injuries.

We know how to get all of the energy we need without using dirty or dangerous fuel sources. It is no longer a question of whether we can - but of whether we will

You seem to be clean," Terminus decided. "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yes," Percy said. "I declare this is stupid.

I'm fat and proud of it. If someone asks me how my diet is going, I say 'Fine - how was your lobotomy?'