We are creatures of story.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

What do you think of allthis, darlin’? Will you be my soul mate?

If I didn't have enormous dreams, I wouldn't have come this far!

The static’s nice. I could do without the screechi

Would you frolic in the land of forever with me?

Look at me closely. Ask yourself: Do I look scared?

If you believe in living a respectable life, you believe in self-help which is the best help!

Art theft gave a guy an appetite.

What matters in life is not so much what happens to us, but what happens in us

The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.

There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.