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

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.

No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too big if it's cherished.

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

I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews - so I'm in favour of starving him.

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