Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's doing right can actually influence the unwritten parts of a novel in a positive way - praise helps a writer know what's good about what he's written, what's interesting and exciting, and what to work for in writing the conclusion.

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

Are you happy here?" I said at last. He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.

From the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world: 'We are the little black sheep who have gone astray . . . Baa baa baa . . . Gentlemen songsters off on a spree . . . Doomed from here to eternity . . .

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.