To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.

In foreign countries, when people see what Donald Trump is saying on Twitter since the election and seeing what he's saying in these calls with foreign leaders, they take everything very seriously and they take everything very literally.

[William] Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekend he searches for the ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation.

If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff

What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject.

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.