Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.

I tend to think of fear and humour as very, very close together. And to be honest I think pornography completes the triangle, because they are things that to work need to evoke a certain reaction.

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

I've never known anyone who was what he or she seemed; or at least, was only what he or she seemed. People carry worlds within them.

I know that the way to be a really successful writer is to write the same kind of book over and over again. Find the kind of thing that people like and just write one of those over and over again. I don't do that. I just keep doing different things.

Nobody will ever hurt her. She’ll just smile her faint vague wonderful smile and walk away.

The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.