He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

My life is a reading list.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.