I am the worst judge of my books.

Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

What is money, after all? Almost nothing, when one has a sufficiency of it.

Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.