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The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close...more

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He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really ...more

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Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.

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Of course, there were other sorts of literature -- theoretical, self-referencial, lachrymosely autobiographical -- but they were just dry wanks.

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It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of fa...more

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When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores...more

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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

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Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.

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Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings,...more

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Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what poi...more

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The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

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If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.

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The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

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I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries...more

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What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its p...more