One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

Writing is above all a question of instinct.

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, creaking and incongruous, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand.

You have to be a product of the product.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.