Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house.

The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.

When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places.

Everything outside was elegant and savage and fleshy. Everything inside was slow and cool and vacant. It seemed a shame to stay inside.

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.