Social media is called social media for a reason. It lends itself to sharing rather than horn-tooting.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

The internet is 95 percent porn and spam

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.