They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox.

There is nobody in the world that you can't get if you really concentrate on it, if you really want them. You've got to want it to the exclusion of everything else.

But he does look stupid.' Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid.

I've been working, working, working, and you know, sometimes you look back at your work and you see that it just isn't any good.

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.