I never went to university. I'm self-educated. I didn't go because I was too impatient, too arrogant.

The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble.

Dogs are dim creatures, do not speak to me of their good sense--have you ever heard of a team of tomcats hauling a sled across the frozen wastes?

I am the worst judge of my books.

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.

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

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.