I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
Death, of course, is a refuge. It’s where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It’s where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.
However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.
My whole life is my work.
The Daily Mail can’t say ‘asylum-seeker’ without saying ‘foreign criminal’ in the same sentence. I’m sure it’s practically editorial policy.
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
And thus love makes fools of us all.
I think that there’s something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto – ‘Swifter, higher, stronger’ – it’s such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.
They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the winds slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square. Yes but these are the same portents that precede lunchtime, frankly.
Studying psychology is fun because you’re always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.
The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don’t always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn’t have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I’m interested in the exceptions.
I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
You may think that’s funny Osama but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It’s like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there’s always a tiny bit left isn’t there?
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
That is the trouble with happiness-all of it is built on top of something that men want.
There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.
We’re often told that we live in a globalized world, and we talk about it all the time, but people don’t stop to think about what it means.
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive.
This thing with being lovers, it isn’t like being married.
The only bad days as a writer are the ones when you are too cowardly or too lazy to sit down at the keyboard and give it everything you have.