1. “The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There’s a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.”
2. “True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.”
3. “Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.”
4. “Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.”
5. “Politics is the enemy of imagination.”
6. “You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.”
7. “The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.”
8. “Daylight seemed then to be the physical manifestation of common sense.”
9. “You can tell a lot from a person’s nails. When life life starts to unravel, they’re among the first to go.”
10. “I want to live in a place where strangers rush to help someone in distress.”
11. “One has to have the courage of one’s pessimism.”
12. “Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.”
13. “Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.”
14. “Nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning.”
15. “Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.”
16. “When its gone, you’ll know what a gift love was. You’ll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”
17. “Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy.”
18. “Not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order, especially when they were alone.”
19. “Oblivion seemed the only reasonable option.”
20. “I don’t hold grudges.”
21. “That love which does not build a foundation on good sense is doomed.”
22. “You could say that all novels are spy novel and all novelists are spy masters.”
23. “No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.”
24. “Not being boring is quite a challenge.”
25. “In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot.”
26. “The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.”
27. “Most of the humanity gets without reading novels or poetry, and no one would deny the richness of their thoughts.”
28. “When anything can happen everything matters”
29. “When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion.”
30. “Looking after children is one of the ways of looking after yourself.”
