To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.

Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.

To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.

It isn't that inspiration doesn't exist, but it comes only with writing.

There isn't, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it.

Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.