For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.

I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.

Sometimes, I think there's a lack of ambition in me. But then sometimes, I think, no, you can, like William Blake said, you know, see heaven in a grain of sand. If you look really, really closely at a situation, you can find almost endless interest in it.

My mother was wonderfully out about her dementia. She would sort of - she would say to me, I came out to the window cleaner about having dementia. You know, I love the way that verb for coming out of the closet has now become so socially useful for all sorts of situations, like when you need to explain to the window cleaner that you don't know if you paid him or not.

Vitamins are medicine for not getting sick and going back to Heaven yet.