Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

Everything seems fine until you're about 40. Then something is definitely beginning to go wrong. And you look in the mirror with your old habit of thinking, 'While I accept that everyone grows old and dies, it's a funny thing, but I'm an exception to that rule.

When it comes to flying, I am a nervous passenger but a confident drinker and Valium-swallower.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

I sometimes feel I'm a sort of cult writer, rather than a mainstream writer, in that those who like my stuff like it a lot, but the appeal is not that broad.

It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true-unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward-shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.

Style isn't something added on; it's intrinsic to the perceptions and the way you see life.