“Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.”

“There isn't, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it.”

“To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don’t have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.”

“If the original of any of your characters would win a libel case against you, you have failed to create a real character.”

“Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.”

“In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.”

“I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.”