Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's on….

Foreign governments are going to be poring through all these Donald Trump tweets looking for - to try and discern what it means for foreign policy..

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere..

Nine times out of 10, the most charming thing to say in any given situation will be the exact opposite of what one really feels..

One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at..

All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge..

I would hope that nothing that I write would ever seem earnest because I subscribe absolutely to Franz Nietzsche's claim when he says, "Ah, earnestne….

I want to stress, this is the experience-growing up in a working-class family-that defined me and continues to define me. It's the core of my being. ….

I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl..

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it..

He [Thelonious Monk] played each note as though astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was correcting a….

Like most writers I spend a lot of my time sort of thinking, "It's such agony, I can't do it.".

Nicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybod….

To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf..

The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, ….

If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff.

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire..

I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover..

Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation..

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of o….

It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a l….