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

We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

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.

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?

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