Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.

The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.

Show me the artist anywhere who's had an utterly stable mental life, and I'll buy you hot dinners for the rest of your life.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

You make a film you feel is as real as possible and hope people react as though it were real.

It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.