The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

The punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.

What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.

There is a terrible weight in all kinds of beauty

I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.