[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.

It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.