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

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.

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often.

What do I love when I love my God?

You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

I thought doing reality TV would be the greatest success of my life or the biggest mistake.

I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.

I've never been one that thinks that the function of an instrument is to approach the purity of voice or the structure of a beautifully sung line.

The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.

I used comedy as a way to combat my dyslexia. I was barely getting by scholastically, so I used a lot of humor.

I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?

You can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are.

Words are everything to me. Words can build you up and feel so good. On the flip side, words can absolutely demolish you.