Everyone my age had written a novel and I was still having difficulty writing a paragraph.

When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafTs.

French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.