Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.

There are two categories of writers, it could be said: The author who is just a voice, and the one who is also creating a picture. I belong to the latter, because I have an acute visual sense.

Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.

Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is 'I know this feeling. I was here before'.

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next.

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.

Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity.