The English kill their meat twice: once when they slaughter it and once when they cook it.

Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.

The great thing about having money is that you can actually just get on with your life and not have to think about paying the bills or crouch over The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times and look at the stock figures and things like that. That bores me rigid.

The English kill their meat twice: once when they slaughter it and once when they cook it.

I have a very set routine. I work six days a week, but only half days. I work from 9 in the morning till 1 in the afternoon, without any interruptions, a fair slug.

The funny thing in France is that writers are not allowed to retire, because the French government say you are still earning money from books you wrote 20 years ago.

Best advice I've ever received: Finish.