Plenty of friendships are sustainable through dinners and lunches, but will not stand a week away. So be careful with whom you go on holiday.

I don't think I'm an unkind person, I don't think my books are unkind, and I don't think my readers are unkind.

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

In my defence I can only say that her past, too, like mine, like everyone's in fact, was a locked box. Occasionally we allow people a peep, but generally only at the top level. The darker streams of our memories we negotiate alone.

The business of life is learning that you can't lay down the terms.

My own belief is that most people are trying to do their best. It doesn't mean they have no nasty side, or that they don't have a bad temper, or that they have never done anything they feel ashamed of. But fiction operates on people waking up trying to be horrible, and I don't think most people are trying to be horrible.

No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.