At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.