At its best, fiction is not a diversion but a means of knowing the world.

My God, the corruptions of literature. It put all these notions into our heads.

Try to get your characters into interesting trouble. Allow your characters to misbehave. Let them stay out after 11.

There's nothing to talk about to strangers anymore, if you know what I mean. Everything I want to say, I say to her.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.

At its best, fiction is not a diversion but a means of knowing the world.