When demons are required someone will always be found to supply the part, and whether you step forward or are pushed is all the same in the end.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.

Inside the peach, there is a stone.

More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?

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.

It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.

Love was like a steamroller. There was no avoiding it; it went over you and you came out flat.