There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

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.

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.