Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.

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.

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

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