Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Football Coaches do play football matches

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

I always look skint. When I buy a Big Issue, people take it out of my hand and give me a pound.

I did nothing wrongEverything I've done at this university I did the right way.

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.

Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

I don't see the direct correlation between my personal life and the novel I'm writing until I'm at the end of the novel or very close to it.

But I also think when we embark on intimate relationships, we make a basic human promise to be decent, to hold a flattering mirror up to each other, to be respectful as we explore each other.

It's the kind of clothes that mothers and daughters can wear, in terms of concept... It's not about age. It's about taste, and it's about lifestyle. I believe women of all ages can wear anything.