What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.

A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions (...) if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is consolation - indeed, deep satisfaction - to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life. #Page no.134

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures.

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.