Well, I don’t think Hollywood’s a dirty word at all, I love a lot of Hollywood films.
I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.
Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted ‘One Day’ to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.
I love Billy Wilder, and I love the way that his films can be very touching and very moving and very romantic, and at the same time there’s always a little cynical undertone, there’s always something that undercuts things.
I still find it absurdly difficult to concentrate on a novel if there’s a phone or computer to hand; I have taken to locking them outside the room like noisy pets.
I usually write on a computer – unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that’s common among writers if they get cornered on something.
I read a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love ‘Tender is the Night,’ and its atmosphere of doomed romance. He was one of the greatest prose stylists, with a wonderfully clear but lyrical quality.
Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.
As new dawns go, this one is depressingly like the old dawn.
She realises that if she is to save the show she is going to have to improvise a rousing speech, one of the many Henry V moments that make up her working life.
The attraction of a life devoted to sensation, pleasure and self would probably wear thin one day, but there was still plenty of time for that yet.
The problem with all these fiercely individualistic girls was that they were all exactly the same.
You’ve got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it’s unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it’ll be a cyanide capsule.
She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.
Sometimes, when it is going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary.
I’m not the consolation prize, Dex. I’m not something you resort to. I happen to think I’m worth more than that.
I love him, she thought. I’m just not in love with him and also I don’t love him. I’ve tried, I’ve strained to love him but I can’t. I am building a life with a man I don’t love, and I don’t know what to do about it.
All young people worry about things, it’s a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I’d never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.
Cuddling was for great aunts and teddy bears. Cuddling gave him cramp.
And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others.