But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time

The trouble is when people read about authors, they don't feel compelled to read the authors' work.

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

I'd always rather stand or fall on my own mistakes. There's nothing worse than looking back, in a published book, at a line edit or a copy edit that you felt queasy about and didn't want to take, but took anyway.

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 . . .