Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.

When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.

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.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.

Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?