You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.

I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

You are safe with me." "I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.