You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what youre doing is not any kind of public show, until youre ready for it.

Ah wonder if anybody this side of the Atlantic has ever bought a baseball bat with playing baseball in mind.

Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers.

I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.

These days you can't write anybody off. If anybody is a right-wing populist, you can't write them off now because that is the rising tide of our time.

I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.