It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

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.

Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up... They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won't drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that's fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.

The whole Melrose series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.

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 That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

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.