Flowers, after love, must have been the best advert planet Earth had going for it.

Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.

There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.

The first rule of marriage: solve the mystery, end the love.

And yet, I was scared of falling asleep, because the moment I fell asleep my wounds would heal and right then I didn’t want that to happen. Right then, I found a strange but real comfort in the pain.

No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.

So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”“Pretty much.

The best way to think of the ageing process in relation to a human face is to imagine a map of an area of innocent land which slowly becomes a city with many long and winding routes.

The next day I had a hangover.I realised that if getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.

Humans, in the day that has been the Earth, have been here for less than a minute. We’re a late-night piss in the toilet, that’s all we are.

Laughter, I realized, was the reverberating sound of a truth hitting a lie.

Some of the imperfections will be visible, but this house has been here a long time. I see no reason to cover up the dings and scars. We've all got 'em.

I am in the unthinkable situation that people cannot bear to contemplate.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life's work shows our children that we don't chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.

Don't reject a shoe because you can't run in it. It's OK not to run.

It's pride, plain and simple, that keeps me from giving God all the glory and keeping some of it for myself. It is a battle we all fight in some form or another, some of us daily or even hourly.

I'm not a fighter, trust me. But I am someone who can get angry. I have a temper at times. Sometimes it gets the best of you no matter how you manage it.

I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.