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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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