For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.

I write because I want to have more than one life.

They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.

Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.

He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.

When you have children, you're obligated to live.

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.