It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

People never remeber happiness with the care that they lavish on preserving every detail of their suffering.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.