Try pitching a story of happiness to your editors and their toes are going to curl up.

Retiring from writing is not to retire from life, but retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product, in almost every case.

Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming.

My father had osteomyelitis-his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder ... . But the amputation of a Stone Age man called Leaf, a stoneworker, does not relate to my father at all.

These are the stories that we tell ourselves and only ourselves, and they are better left unshared.

To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing.

There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.