The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness.

When you’re in love you don’t have to do a damn thing. You can just be. You can just stay quiet in the world. You don’t have to move an inch.

As my mother once said to me, ‘They’re quite crazy, dear – men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you.

Forget art. Put your trust in ice cream.

In truth, there are only two realities: the one for people who are in love or love each other, and the one for people who are standing outside all that.

Needing something is not the same thing as being interested in the thing itself.

You are a real find and you keep me satisfied, up to a point. After all, I'm a malcontent and you can't change that.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

Gainfully unemployed, very proud of it, too.

When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.

I'm less amazed with your success and more with how you remain unaffected by what it brings with it.

I don't think I'm better than anyone; I just like to prove to myself that things I imagine can be done.

Childhood in large parts of modern Britain, at any rate, has been replaced by premature adulthood, or rather adolescence

Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues.

Coffee is the absolute most dependably ordinary thing I could have every single day.

I'm very sensitive to energy and people and life and animals and a lot of things.

Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty.

When we get jealous, we tell stories to ourselves about other people. Jealousy makes you look for intensity rather than accuracy.

If someone asks me a question it is very difficult not to answer honestly.

TV is very much a producer and writer or creator-driven machine in the States. And I'm the kind of actor that needs to be pushed and have someone on my case a little bit, so I suffer from that.