As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you're going to be a second-rate artist.

Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.

Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

I want, I don’t want. How can one live with such a heart?

I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.

So that’s what art is, for the artist,” said Crake. “An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.