Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

There are two options for any society: total prohibition as in a totalitarian state, or total license. Both avoid the ardours of decision. Both have the attraction of certainty. The difficult option is to decide where the line should be drawn and this, surely, is the responsiblity of any civilized and democratic country.

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.