I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.