Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.

All good novelists have bad memories.

Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.