New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized