“Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.”

“A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.”

“Have more humility. Remember you don't know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers.”

“Writers' trousers are famously unpredictable in many ways, but I haven't met another author whose trousers simply disintegrated en route to a reading. There I was, young and nervous and not wearing a frock due to poor body image issues, stuck on a late afternoon train, leafing through my notes in a preparatory way and yet also feeling, somehow, chilly.”

“Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.”

“I can't help it either, the laughing: solemn gatherings, slowballads, pompous orations, any person or occasion that assumes I'lloffer my unreserved respect: I tend to find them all hysterical in theend. Especially if someone similar is there to set me off. They don'thave to do much: I recognize what it looks like when somebody'scomposure starts to strip itself away. They'll maybe cross their armswith that twitchy, shaky, tension, or they'll grab down little wheezesof embarrassed air, or they'll simply hood their faces under theirpalm, trying to hide how fast they're slipping, how fast *we're*slipping, because I'll be weakening with them by then, I'll be just aslost, pulled equally tight against the moment when we both stop caringand let it disgrace us -- when we laugh.”

“The right wrist, because I'm right-handed - so that must be the one that's done most wrong. Although, now that I think, my sins have mostly been ambidextrous.”