....basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green knit shirt from Lacoste.

Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

I was trained mainly as a short story writer and that's how I started writing, but I've also become very interested in non-fiction, just because I got a couple of magazine jobs when I was really poor and needed the money and it turned out that non-fiction was much more interesting than I thought it was.

If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.

There's a weird kind of paradox that the more expensive the vacation is, the more potentially anxiety-producing it is.

There's a certain kind of neurological makeup that goes along with being a writer, and having been in the room with a few other writers at the same time, it's rather wearing to be around. And it does - there is a kind of hypervigilance about it. Unfortunately it's got disadvantages. If you turn that hypervigilance on yourself and, for instance, whether or not you have a pimple on the end of your nose, it can get really depressing.

But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.