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.

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often.

A deep wound inside him began to heal. And he suddenly knew that being separated from this woman would only bring him a certain sadness.

One Must Always Remember That Birth, Old Age, Disease And Death Comes At Any Moment In Regardless Of Whom We Are Or What We Have In Forms Of Material Possession.

First learn the meaning of what you say and then speak.

There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

George Lindsay who played Goober thought Andy Griffith Show limited his career.

I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.

When you're in my house you shall do as I do and believe who I believe in. So Bart butter your bacon.

Stage performing is a dying art form.

Goofy was the word that was used most often by my sisters because I've been this tall ever since I was 12 years old.

Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!