There's never a bad time to put earplugs in. They're the kind of thing you can reject as a bit lame, but somebody told me to do start wearing earplugs and it turned out to be great advice.

I always save a huge book for a flight, because then you read it at both airports and on the plane and by the time you get home you're a quarter of the way through and it doesn't feel so unmanageable any more.

When I'm writing new material, I never have any trouble coming up with ideas.

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

Statistically, you don't have much chance of becoming president if you're not tall and fairly handsome or at least conventional-looking.

You couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate at least something. Indeed, perhaps you couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate almost everything.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.