But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of the moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and und….

I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical….

Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy..

But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could onl….

...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance..

There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its charac….

And she did not miss his presence so much as his voice on the phone. Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention;….

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy..

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the si….

When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to….

But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put a….

How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?.

He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end..

These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of ….

There are ways in which art can have a longer reach than politics..

Most of humanity gets by without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts..

It wasn't torpor that kept her - she was often restless to the point of irritability. She simply liked to feel that she was prevented from leaving, t….

I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually t….

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit..

If I could write the perfect novella I would die happy..

He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die..