When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.

I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

Fear has a smell, as love does.

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.