“It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.”

“Adrian's fragment also refers to the question of responsibility: whether there's a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I'm all for drawing it narrowly. Sorry, no, you can't blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes, or society, or whatever - not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary.”

“There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.”

“What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.”

“Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary”

“Look, writers aren't perfect, I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.”

“Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.”