It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose.

All the things we value in society don't mean much in fiction.

They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.

I think novelists are in the education business, really, but they're not teaching you times tables, they are teaching you responsiveness and morality and to make nuanced judgments. And really to just make the planet look a bit richer when you go out into the street.

No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. And the great satirists, like Swift and Dickens, tend to write about abuses and injustices that have already been partially corrected - you write about it after it's over.