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.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.

Payments to the disabled are getting slashed and people like me are getting a tax cut. Who could possibly think that is a good thing?

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.

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.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.