I had known loneliness before, and emptiness upon the moor, but I had never been a NOTHING, a nothing floating on a nothing, known by nothing, lonelier and colder than the space between the stars. It was more frightening than being dead.

I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.

I never base characters on real people. There are people who do that but I really don't know how to do it.

Nostalgia is something we think of as fuzzy. But it's pain. Pain concerning the past.

I don't think you have the right to shout about other people's private life.

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.