You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.
I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work.
Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.
To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom.
I feel like something important has happened to meIs this possible?
Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.
I think the story is the most ancient form of human entertainment.
Italians give their city sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay.
Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience.
I’m not from a milieu where high-register language or philosophical ideas were welcome.
Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.
Japanese food makes me feel particularly good.
The earth’s a door, if you press your ear against it.
Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.
What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn’t have that smell.
As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens.
Lunatics are writers whose works write them.
Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.
I have always preferred maps to books. They don’t answer you back.
Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.