The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

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

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.