It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

Why does life need evidence of life?

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.