We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest.

She had such unusual eyes. They made me think of the seaside, and so I called her Ocean, and could not have told you why.

I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and the end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up, and I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.

I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.' 'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.

Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.

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.