As always after drinking too much, I felt like my own ghost trying to take it's first solo walk outside the body.

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.

I certainly see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist.

Ka thought it strangely depressing that the suicide girls had had to struggle to find a private moment to kill themselves. Even after swallowing their pills, even as they lay quietly dying, they’d had to share their rooms with others.

Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction.

To read a novel is to wonder constantly, even at moments when we lose ourselves most deeply in the book: How much of this is fantasy, and how much is real?

I don’t like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels … I keep my deep radical things for my novels.