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

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

The first book I fell in love with was 'Little Toot,' the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.

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

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.

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.