He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.

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

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.