If there is such a thing as sin in this world, I think it must be shutting oneself up against hope.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.

Life is a disease.