Vodka! That's a child's drink, why am I drinking this stupid drink, oh and why am I on a traffic island?

Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! Fry her!! Fry her!"

You're supposed to eat the cows. They're great big lumbering stupid things - they'd be everywhere if we didn't eat them.

A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

Vodka is a very deceptive drink, because you drink it and you think, "What is this? This is pointless! It's - you can't taste it, you can't smell it... Why did we waste our money on this, bloody - why are we on a traffic island?"

The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.

When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark... for hours... and don't move... I'm locking the door now.'