In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.

Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because they are repeated in so many exploitative contexts - adverts and TV shows and political speeches.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

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