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

All our heroes, all our great stories are about failure.

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

I don't need new boots I got bluchers back down home. Eff the effing bluchers I'll buy you new adjectival effing elastic sided boots.

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 it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.