The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

I think what I like to do is to begin with the ordinary and find the extraordinary in it.

Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad - because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying 'You're mad, you're mad.'

My upbringing was absolutely not the archetypal writer's upbringing. Even, arguably, the opposite.

How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting.

I like the world we've got. If there is anything special and magical, I have to find it in the ordinary stuff.

When I am writing, I'm very much on the ground, on the same ground my characters are treading.