I'd much rather do an obviously commercial writing project than get a day job.

My mother is an office manager, my father a professor of economics and financial planner.

Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.

Some of the food in Liquor is food I've really eaten filtered through a veil of fiction.

If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life.

Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.