I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.

Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.

Find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.

He really did not care whether he survived or not, so long as it rendered him unconscious and absolved him of responsibility.

I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a bit of a roller coaster ride...