The standard personality type for a writer is a shy megalomaniac.

- John Lanchester

But knowing that you had gone wrong, and knowing how you had gone wrong, were not the same thing as knowing how to put it right.

- John Lanchester

Sometimes, the only way of doing something is to do it.

- John Lanchester

The person doing the worrying experiences it as a form of love; the person being worried about experiences it as a form of control.

- John Lanchester

People would rather earn 60 grand in an area where their neighbours earn 40, than earn 80 in an area where their neighbours earn a hundred.

- John Lanchester

You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty wa…

- John Lanchester

Somebody told me ... that he overheard a banker's wife saying her husband was working for free this year-this was 2009. What she meant was, he was ju…

- John Lanchester

In other words, RBS had its origins in a failed speculation, a bail-out, and a financial crash so big it helped destroy Scotland's status as a separa…

- John Lanchester

It can be a way of knowledge, a path, an inspiration, a Tao, an ordering, a memory, a fantasy, a seduction, a prayer, a summoning, an incantation mur…

- John Lanchester