There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.