To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.