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.

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

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.

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.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

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