There is a slovenly disrespect for truth and reality that has infected and cross-infected the arts; the values of entertainment are relentlessly in the ascendant, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to write a naturalistic fictional sentence without feeling that the fabric of that sentence is already compromised.

Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.

It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.

What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?

We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form of lived experience.

A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal.