There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.

You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.

I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.

When you catch yourself lying to your therapist, you know it's a waste of money.

There aren't many shy writers left.

There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.

Reading a novel is just a much more involving and intimate experience than the act of watching a film. I mean, you literally get inside of a novelist's head, and you invest many hours to do so.