A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.

My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect.

I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling - somewhere between diarrhoea and sex - this grief that is almost genital.

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

I’m really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don’t confuse the issues really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.