It is not that sport, over-indulged in, coarsens the mind; it is that it dulls it.

Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.

Schadenfreude is so nutritious.

We've clearly entered a period in which the analog of text is no longer important or relevant. All text will be electronic. I accept that fact. My house has thousands of books in it, and I've started to look at them completely differently. They now seem to me to be like antiquarian objects. Their use value has become negligible to me because I'm perfectly happy to read on an e-reader.

For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.

I do have a fantasy life in which I can grout bathrooms - but not for a living.

As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.