Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.

I write fiction because it's a way of making statements I can disown.

I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of its passengers to shove it.

You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.

I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way.

The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.

Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.