I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.

Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

I cannot bear not to know the end of a tale. I will read the most trivial things – once commenced – only out of a feverish greed to be able to swallow the ending – sweet or sour – and to be done with what I need never have embarked on. Are you in my case? Or are you a more discriminating reader? Do you lay aside the unprofitable?

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

Cyclists. I really hate them. I wish they would not be so self-righteous and realise they are a danger to pedestrians. I wish cyclists would not vindictively snap off wing mirrors on cars when they were trying to cross in front of the car at a danger to motorists and pedestrians.

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.