There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

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.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.