Language is a machine for making falsehoods.

Art is not cozy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

Words are the most subtle symbols which we possess and our human fabric depends on them.

All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn.

The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement.

People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.