I would love to learn how to air kiss non-awkwardly.

You couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate at least something. Indeed, perhaps you couldn’t truly love anything if you didn’t hate almost everything.

I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.

If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.

I don't have a day job, so I read any time of day.

I'm reasonably good at talking onstage, but actually holding court in a pub is all to do with power dynamics which I don't think has anything to do with fiction.

There's never a bad time to put earplugs in. They're the kind of thing you can reject as a bit lame, but somebody told me to do start wearing earplugs and it turned out to be great advice.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.

The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.

I'm very finicky about when I'm in the right mood to write. So most days, I find some excuse not to do anything.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.

I think that testosterone is a rare poison.

(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead.

I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

God's message extends beyond borders. Anyone in the world can learn to forgive those who have injured them, however great or small that injury may be.

I smoke crack. I get all my dancers together and we do a prayer.

One percent of ballplayers are leaders of men. The other 99 percent are followers of women.

Ma petite is not a subtle woman. Unless you say it, she will not understand it.

I have been Merlin wandering in the woods Of a far country, where the winds waken Unnatural voices , my mind broken By a sudden acquaintance with man's rage.

Am I not ninja enough? Are you saying that I lack ninja?