Sometimes an old idea gets relegated to the back of the line in the mad delight of a new idea, one you've never had before, and that you write fast in the thrill of the new. No rules. Just stories, and you tell as many of them as you can.

Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.

It's one thing to want money, but if you find yourself choking on a coin as you wake, the money is slightly less desirable.

He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.

Most of what I want to try to do is continue to go places with fiction that I've never gone before, and tell stories I've never told before, and one of the problems you rapidly discover about fans is what fans want is the last thing they liked. They want more of that.

It always felt like the price of being a writer was that you would - even in the most terrible moments, there was a little phantom version of you sitting on your shoulder with a notebook going, I can use this. OK, look at the way that the light is glinting off the broken plastic on the road next to the blood. You can use this. And it was always a very strange feeling.

Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.