It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.