Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

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

We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.

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 . . .

But it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.