When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.

It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

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.

We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.

The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.