Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

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.

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.

Consciousness is not about information but about its opposite: order. Consciousness is not a complex phenomenon

Regrets begin the moment we're comfortable with settling.

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature. ... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

It's just a deep pleasure to read something you've written yourself - if and when you like it.

I don't think fundamentally we should ban him [Donald Trump], I don't think we can go around doing that.

If there were fish in the lake, fishing would make no sense.

This I believe: I believe there is no God.

I'm not a bona fide human being.

I love when I'm writing and I'm cringing because I know I'm doing something right.