Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
All tastes are expressions of belief.
The nineties, ecstatic decade!
I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen; suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.
Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it’s Allah’s turn or his own.
A reality shaped around your own desires – there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
I love to dance, and sing – in the shower, not in public. Im too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing – dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It’s not a selling point, it’s not a ‘quirky’ feature, it’s not a cynical marketing ploy, it’s not an artistic statement, it’s not even a plot device. It’s a fact, like seedless grapes.
You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires – there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs – this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissolution, disappearance.
Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
It’s gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
People don’t settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.
Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It’s the last stop on the nutso express.
Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn’t it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?
The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.