The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.

I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, "Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death." Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.

Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.

Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.

Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.