Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

I'm not senile," I snapped. "If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.

Winning intoxicates you, and numbs you to the sufferings of others.

When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

You fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.