When I was 13, I really used to skip down the street, happy in thinking, "Oh, well, someone's suffering pain in order for me to feel this pleasure."

When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.

- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.

'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.